The Poetry of William Hammett

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Thursday, September 18, 2025

Poor Man's Yoga

In the park in the fall,
I hold my arms outstretched
as if I had just awakened from sleep,
though that happened many years ago.
I try to touch my toes several times,
always breathing, always breathing,
but I can’t reach too far beneath my knees.
It’s almost time to go home, I think,
or maybe not quite yet.
I turn my head to the left, breathing,
and see a robin sitting on a branch
that has lost all but three browning notes
that once waved a symphony.
I turn my head to the right, breathing,
and see a young mother and her child.
He is laughing at me, a wrinkled thing,
and I begin laughing too.
I have become the cliché,
the old man in the heavy overcoat
on a bright chilly afternoon
sitting on a park bench.
“Hello, little boy. Namaste.”
I stand and sit three times in a row,
always breathing, always breathing.
It is October indeed
and almost time to go home.
Shadows reclining on the grass
will soon stir and whisper and rise,
tall and dark and definitive,
and start walking down the concrete path.
It is October indeed.
It is almost time to go home.

~William Hammett

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Friday, September 12, 2025

The Vatican Blues

I attended an audience with the Lord,
a small white robe and zucchetto
floating on the balcony like a dove.
He looked at the sea of nuns and veils
heaving like waves from a Galilee wind,
sun painting the colonnade the color of clouds.
Latin syllables flew through Saint Peter’s Square
like pigeons, landing on Babel’s obelisk and cross.
“What we need is a song,” said a priest from Budapest.
Snake played the bass, the tall giraffe on the ‘bone
while a beast with whiskers lightly scared the snare.
Black girls in silver sequins snapped and swayed,
background singers chanting “ooh poo pah doo.”
The ship lumbered through the Med,
but the albino could not calm the storm,
did not walk on water, did not cross the sea
of eyes looking to the balcony of be.
The whore of Babylon lit a cigarette,
then crushed it with a stiletto heel.
The seven hills of Rome were done,
leveled by an acid dream of horns and eyes
and a dragon dressed to the nines in fire.
The multitude nodded off and fell asleep by one.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, September 3, 2025

The Play Within the Play

I am writing a play, and the ink is wine
or the wine is ink—I don’t know which.
Iago will not stop babbling his convoluted plot
to make me jealous and kill the bitch,
but which one? I have made so many.
I only wish to kiss the lips of Juliet,
a palmer and a pilgrim who will get her yet.
What are these screams from a Globe on a globe
crying for a gaggle of hag, a trio of witch?
I have papers to grade in this oak-paneled cove
at the edge of the ivy-colored quad,
the wild yet carefully-planted Forest of Arden
while the Avon carries the street, the ford, the garden.
Spritely Ariel spins my mind like the moon:
the play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch
the conscience of the wrongful king
while Prospero, magician extraordinaire,
conjures up a storm so that Miranda,
a lipstick looker and first-class babe,
might marry her flamenco jape and jade.
Between you and me, I spin it all out of air.
Call me Will. I am the bard and he is me.
The essays are done and the claret is near.
I do the iambic nine-to-five and lecture on the lines,
but who’s to say I’m not the seer
in the long ago or the still to come in time?

~William Hammett

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