Danse Macabre — John of Kastav — fresco dated 1490, Holy Trinity Church, Hrastovlje, Slovenia - public domain
nothing grows
without the quiet power
the purpose of decay
such is man’s fate
life’s necessary universal rot
to generate
regenerate
compose
and decompose
all of us kings and queens
for a while
then make room
hail the next
long live
by the grace
of his predecessor’s putrefying grave
and on we dance and prance
in this endlessly magnificent farce
Dear reader, do not be fooled. In one way or another, all’s been said and written before. As always, the title for my pieces comes last by toying around with the lines and words. Here, “universal rot” stood out and I couldn’t help but think back to my student days, to the lines in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” which I once knew by heart:
‘It is ten o’clock; Thus we may see,’ quoth he, ‘how the world wags;
‘tis but an hour ago since it was nine;
And after one hour more ‘twill be eleven;
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale.”
So there was the "rot" that had played around in my subconscious, but even better, there was “how the world wags”. And so from hour to hour we rehash and rehash. That’s how the world wags its “tale”. Thank you, old Will.