Many, many years ago
I was watching the great mime Marcel Marceau perform in Sydney. He
did his famous "silent story/poem" the Mask-Maker and I was
struck by the audience reaction, that is taking it as a comic piece.
This poem was the result.
THE MASK-MAKER
for Marcel Marceau
And so you shaped,
in shared imagination,
A poem in movement's
mute articulation,
A man constructing
masks: a clown's creation.
Your seeing fingers
wove, in sightless air,
Two masks from
nothing: pathos frowned with care,
And empty bathos
with a smiling stare.
The white mask-maker
tried on his inventions,
Concealing neutral
feeling with pretensions
Of joy and sadness: thespian conventions.
Until in frantic
play he oscillated,
Imbalanced now
between the near-related,
Set masks of feeling
that he had created...
When suddenly the
comic, false grimace,
The static smile,
ossified onto his face,
Refusing to be
budged: a rigid grace.
And terrified with
this: the resisting lie,
He struggled to snap
its subtle and obsessive tie,
For freedom once
again to weep, to cry.
Why don't we weep
with his absurdity?
The unsuspecting
audience laughed to see
The pathos of our
needless, comic tragedy.
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