(After reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest)

Somewhere, once, you freed him with a jolt,
as when, in youth, we’re suddenly swept forward
into manhood, with no looking back.
A willing helper he became; and since that time
he’s served you, while impatient
for a second freedom after every task.
But you kept arguing (half masterful
and half almost ashamed) that no, you needed him
for this or that, a little longer,
and reminding him of what you’d done to save him.
And yet inwardly you felt that everything
which you were holding back by holding him
you were denying to the air.
Just let him go: it was a sweet temptation…
No more magic, then; you’d be like other men,
borne on the stream towards your fate, and knowing that
the easy friendship which he’d offered you
— which had enhanced the local air you breathed —
was now deprived of tension, lacking obligation,
mindlessly absorbed in the surrounding element.
From then on you’d be needy; and the gift you’d had
by which he’d swoop to earth to do your bidding
when he heard your call, you’d have no longer.
Ageing, poor and powerless you’d be; and yet
you’d still be breathing him. He’d be
a scattered fragrance in the air,
beyond your effort to identify,
the only thing of present substance in a world invisible.
You’d laugh, recalling how you merely had to beckon him
and mighty deeds quite casually were done.
Perhaps you’d also weep to think
how much he loved you and he longed to leave you,
both at once.

(And is that all I have to say?
The man becomes a duke again. He frightens me
as — oh so gently — he inserts the wire
and pulls it through his head so that he hangs
beside the other figures; from now on
‘Be merciful,’ the play appeals…
His epilogue is one of dominance achieved:
to put the past aside, to stand there naked,
left with nothing but his own, his human strength,
‘which is most faint’.)