The Hamlet Project

What studies is our Hamlet giving up to stay in Denmark?
Is he abandoning his dissertation
On the symbolism of flowers in English literature?
Brushing aside anthropological research on village life?
Are his analyses of Latin Rhetorical studies lost forever?
Back at Wittenberg, is his tutor wondering what happened
To that Danish prince?
Are his rooms growing musty?
The library chasing after a student who isn’t there
For the books he hasn’t returned? The ones stacked
Up on his floor
Lining his bookcase
While spiders crawl over them like King Kongs on a tower,
Coating them with webs
Dusting them white
Turning leather powdery and thick with the crumbling of the room.
Does his wooden door have dents in it now
From all the friends wondering where he’s gone?
Is his threshold layered with envelopes scented with the perfume
of the young woman he met outside his philosophy class?
What is Wittenberg like without a Hamlet in it?