The Clown

What are you really, Clown, with your mouth drawn down in perpetual sad surprise, and tears beneath your eyes? White fear is painted on your face, but joy is drawn about your bulbous nose and printed on your clothes in polka dots. You use your large and bumbling

shoes and your voluminous pants and gloves like combatants with massive gravity, designed to let us see the humor of your plight. But - are you so light? Or does, perhaps, your plan show the tripping up of man over his pretenses? Why, laughing, do we sigh and wonder, in between, what you really mean?