THE SHOW MUST GO ON

 

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Curtain falls. The show begins.

The end is really its start.

Like small stories before this,
a protagonist struts on the stage,
his antagonist leaps unto a wing,
they quickly mumble their lines,
and like crossed swords swoon
into muffled profanities sworn
to befall the other at cockcrow.

Nothing thickens the plot, no

act curdles to beg for untangling,
there is no climactic resolution.
The stage is darkened and bare.
No one stirs for a curtain call,
not even a stagehand to watch
a quick and easy curtain fall.

Like life imitating a theatre act,
there is no audience for this end.

-- Albert B. Casuga