Crying clown, why have I always loved you?
Because you also laugh, because I played

puppets as a child and a clown was my favorite.
And the Punch and Judy shows, the sock

and rock, the way they never parted, playing
Shakespeare’s game, strutting and batting

across the world’s stage. The way they endured,
as we try to, doing battle with a pandemic.

During the black siege of Shakespeare’s time
theatres closed and he penned King Lear,

Othello, Macbeth. Now a new age–a plague
with a new curtain drawn across another stage.