Poetry
A man who surprises the goddess bathing, naked
in full blush, head and shoulders haughty above
her scurrying handmaidens, who stumbles
upon her by accident, in an idle moment
as you or I upon the full, clear moon
over the mountain's white shoulder
driving, some January afternoon
the mundane highway. Such a man
in shift
from man of action to man the actor
in her drama, in transition, on the cusp
unaccountable, inarticulate, awkward
within strident grace
dies at the hands of his companions
dies in the teeth of his training, his prized hounds, dies her death as image of his desire-wild, elusive
specimen, silhouette
on a high ridge, leapt
out of range, out of bounds
except to accident, the tricks
of idleness, subtle art
of intention at rest, of the huntress. He dies
in the noise of his name, his friends shouting
"Actaeon, Actaeon. . .," wondering
at his absence, missing
the thrill of the kill.
And "Actaeon," in tone
innocent, excited
echoes today in its exile (unchosen, undeserved
and not bad luck exactly) echoes
because he cannot answer, strains to
through his muzzle, soft lips, thick tongue
of the herbivore, makes sounds
not animal, not human
and cannot and dies
in a body made exquisitely
for life, a trophy, a transport
for his name, lapsed quickly
on the lips of his companions (never
comprehending) on my lips now
ironic, uncertain, changed as he
who saw her
saw through the guise of modesty and boyish
enthusiasm her bright body wet
as any mortal's, saw
through no effort nor virtue nor fault
of his own, his eyes a deer's eyes
darkening, widening, feminine, startled
who otherwise would be unknown to us.
"I have had a great deal of pleasant time with Rice lately, and am getting initiated into a little band-they call drinking deep dying scarlet."
- Keats to his brothers, January, 1818
John Keats and his circle in their cups
died scarlet. And the poet's life
to its dregs did the same, his linen
bedsheets and nightshirt finely spotted.
The world loves him for drinking so deep
from the few years he had, for those pretty
tipples he took from his days' good wine;
the world honours blood flushed in a pale
brow that bends above the blank pages in candle-
flicker, giving joy, believing. Vitality
is beautiful even coughed on a lace cuff,
o little red cosmos, little red heaven,
that last faint breath exhaled before dust
and the cold grave smothered his youth.
I don't know anything certain about the dead
except they're gone, young Keats and his brothers,
the two women named Fanny he loved, his friends,
the publishers who respected his art, the guardian
who didn't, Shelley with a drowned volume in his
shirt-pocket under Italian stars, gone. A century
of letter-writing, gossip, tuberculosis and poems.
And I don't know where the spirit of any poet goes
if it doesn't die scarlet wherever it can, Keats's
joy in October sunsets over the Adams River, full in
the salmon's scales as they scrabble to spawn before
the air eats to nothing their lace-threaded bones,
Keats's fear in the eyes of the ring-necked pheasant
shot out of its heart in the blue skies of my marshland
home, the long script of its bright death trailing
off into the ditches and rushes. I have heard the music
of his lines gasped from a thousand slack jaws
while the world stood crowded on the riverbanks,
amazed; my hands have touched the spots of his truth
on a thousand downed wings still quivering in frost.
In my wrists live the ghosts of all the words
ever written in his, and his Queen's, English;
they gather in my pulses, drinking life, dying scarlet,
unrestrained in their gaiety and rowdiness, dying
like the salmon and the pheasant and the flushed
eves of fall, dying as a poet dies, face turned
towards what's left of his life, the spatter
of his joy's heaven on his clothes,
the light going out on his page forever, the wax
of the last candle on his nightstand melted down,
as he lies grieving for every second he's lost
of the sun: I don't expect to know the vivid dawn
that finally dissolved the gay circle of Keats,
but if I'm blessed to die scarlet on my native ground,
let the wind dig a grave for my pallid song.
