Snowdrops and Summer Snowflakes, Drooping

Another moment in Reginald Shepherd's Fata Morgana that caught my attention was this, from the poem "Snowdrops and Summer Snowflakes, Drooping":

The river is silted with sentiments, Ophelia
sings flowers in hell to all the goodnight
ladies martyred to plots ...

That makes this poem a much better version of one I wrote long ago, "Gretchen and Ophelia," which toyed around with the similarities between Gretchen in Goethe's Faust and Ophelia, the way that they die over and over again on stages all over the world.

Where is Hamlet being played tonight? Who is playing Hamlet? Who Ophelia? Where is Faust being played? And who is playing Gretchen? Questions like the claim that somewhere a radio station is playing a Beatles tune as you read this. Which station? What tune? "Things We Said Today" would be my choice.

Shepherd continues with all the things he would give Ophelia, all the flowers, and concludes with this:

... What I wouldn't give
to hear her shut up that infernal singing,
walk out of sullen water open-eyed.