Mask Unmasked

An actor visited a hamlet

to enact a fairy tale,

His eccentricity was that

he wouldn’t perform without a veil.

The mask was magical,

transparent and arcane,

It bestowed varied emotions

which, he, at will, could feign.

The artiste thus empowered,

Made use of this artifice

Not on fictitious rostrums,

But on the promenade of life.

The emotions of love and hate,

were at his beck and call,

The maidens were enraptured

Young mothers were enthralled.

How could the poor wretches know,

that the emotions weren’t sincere,

There was no prologue written,

warning, “I am not the lion, but the weaver.”

The actor was a vagabond,

spreading the love pollen, a wandering butterfly

Once a heart was captured, he would disappear,

In the blink of an eye.

Some hearts were damaged a little more,

They grieved and resigned to their fate..

Others were stronger, they defamed him,

With a smouldering of hate.

A wintry evening, his eyes were bewitched,

by a damsel divine,

She said, “My name is beauty”,

He roared, “I’m the Beast, you are mine!”

With hazel eyes, the dimpled smile,

The mask did her regale,

Her heart enslaved by the craft,

She stepped into the fairy tale.

This passion was a facade,

A few maidens did forewarn,

She refused to believe, how can the love be untrue,

“My name is on his hand!”

He serenaded her with poetry,

In an intense solliloquy,

That she trusted his impressive encore,

Her pink blush did betray.

But alas his emotions were perfidious,

fabricated by the mask and its sorcery,

he could abandon them at will,

When he was tired of his ornery.

So the proscenium opened up,

For the world it was a feast,

Each one conjectured in bewilderment,

the tale of ‘Beauty and the Beast’.

The play had reached its climax,

sat the audience with bated breath,

As the beast unmasked his true self,

his lover paled as death.

For as soon as the mask fell to the ground,

My oh My, What a sight!

The actor’s heart was nothing but stone,

His hazel eyes, dark as midnight.

Without the mask, he was savage,

incapable of kindness or love,

His dimpled cheek became a wicked grin,

thus, he was exuent with a bow.

Now Beauty stands alone onstage,

For this Life’s scaffold,

The society is the audience,

She lifts her chin, stands bold.

With a smile that reaches her scorching eyes,

She raises her fragile hand,

The mask unbidden, rises and

bows to her command.

The mask is now her shelter,

As spotlights strike her face,

She is an outcast, yet undeterred,

She takes centerstage!!