“Just who is responsible for this misfortune?”
With such questions the waking contender,
in the first of many long-winded monologues,
addresses his bewildered auditors, now hushed,
at pains to discover his origin,
identified as the thief and wondering why.
The audience grants the farce its mad postulate,
far-fetched, improbable though it may be.
Just so, history’s make-believing readership.
For we continue to confuse the principals
with the extras and the comic relief,
transfixed by dramaturgy’s ancient stratagem
that brings in mechanical God at the climax,
the people knowing not why they suffer,
the hero all unaware he is a foundling.
[Previous: The Gliding Intervals]
[Next: The Way to Show Piety]