Rosencrantz and Guildernstern,
They sat upon a log,When one said to the other,
Through the morning fog,
A man breaking his journey
between one place and another
at a third place of no name, character, population or significance
sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear.
The other turned to face his friend
Not sure he’d heard him right.He though he’d said a unicorn
That came and went from sight.
That in itself is startling
but there are precedents for mystical encounters
of various kinds or, to be less extreme,
a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy;
Guil continued without much pause
There would be so stopping himNow that he’d been started
Save tearing him limb from limb.
until - "My God," says a second man,
"I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn."
At which point a dimension is added
that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be.
He’d always been one for melodrama,
From such an early ageIf you wrote the story of his life
There’d be drama on every page.
A third witness, you understand,
adds no further dimension
but only spreads it thinner,
and a fourth thinner still,
And there was the other side,
One slightly more morose,Whose wistful pessimism
Cut all too close.
and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets
and the more reasonable it becomes
until it is as thin as reality,
the name we give to the common experience ...
Yet when it comes down to it
He is most insightful –Never a more accurate word
Though sometimes more delightful.
"Look, look!" recites the crowd.
"A horse with an arrow in its forehead!
It must’ve been mistaken for a deer."
I'm sorry it wasn't a unicorn.
Though unicorns may not be real,
Nor Guil or his friend, Rosencrantz,We can marvel at the wonder
And sing and jump and dance.
It would have been nice to have unicorns.
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