Editor’s Note: One of the many challenges of producing a 48-page magazine is that I almost always have about 98 pages worth of material that I want to include. In addition to John Chamberlain’s appreciation of Nick Clary that is running in the fall issue of the magazine, he included this poignant poem, which we couldn’t run for lack of space.

My Dear Hamlet

What I could not say haunts me still.
This castle, dark, mysterious, no longer mine, fills my lonely mind,
as if my mind has become a castle itself, its ramparts cold stone,
winding passageways, steps worn with time, damp with fear and failure,
warmed by distant fires, fretful ambitions, lofty hopes driven down,
chilled by secret maneuvers I acquiesced — what mother would turn
childhood friend to enemy — I agreed, to all that, yes.  And yes,
Hamlet, his sweat was rank, he was — yes, I proceeded from Hyperion
to satyr, and my world went dim.

Eavesdropping made my breath tight and still.
brought little knowledge, just weighted worry, despair, the tapestry
turned around.  It was not worth it, after all.
I witnessed that heavy tapestry heaving, why allowed I thus?
I had no life to breathe these words, my dear Hamlet, no life and now
no breath, anymore.

What else I could not say:
It was not your madness watched, unwatched, festering.
I was mad as sea and wind inside.
These were truth and fear in my mind contending, and already I was but
a ghost to reason.
Yes, I lied to you, to him, but never, dear Hamlet, to myself.
Those inward, truthful gnawings, tainted with Ophelia’s rue, these
wore me down, until all I could do or say was follow him, or proceed,
while this castle, my mind, grew inward upon itself, to digest these
stones, and Elsinore became a nutshell, so that all those convoluted
staircases led back to this:
the madness of so little time,
and a final image of bodies strewn across the floor, of litter and
such waste.  Were there others?
My dear Hamlet, tell me no.

As I died, you were still alive, ensworded, envenomed, vain for him
whose memory you defended.
Defend mine, too, Hamlet: range and set this castle from weighted
worry back to stone.
I will fast in fire until you do.

You may find me upon the battlements, wind inside the rain, or behind
a tapestry, a sad breath by the door, a dim likeness to who I was.
Remember me, Hamlet, as I did know the truth all along.
Remember me for what I could not say,
for what I could not protest nearly enough:
that I knew you to be truthful, Hamlet, to be my Hamlet, my dear
Hamlet, too true.

– John Chamberlain ’80