Dear Keats, so many of your songs are sad,
The fruit of a life that could not see your sun
Rise in the wake of sickness and despair -
You lay on your deathbed thinking you had failed.
But look, now! Your truth, your beauty, has prevailed.
Not just your name, and place, did Time repair,
But also, the man who bore your name has won
No small regard from one who reads you and is glad.
So you broke away from safety, not knowing how to live
But knowing only that you had to write, or die;
Because there was such richness in your veins -
The joy and grief of being, and the race for more -
To run beside the writers who had come before.
And so leaping up to ride, you loosed the reins -
A breakneck pace. Now at the head you vie
With those who, once you thought, no ground would give.
The heart warms to Keats, whose story is the call,
Of language and of love, to one from level ground,
Who had nothing at first, not like the golden boys
Who knew their Greek, were born with silver to their lips,
Took what they wanted when they wanted, launched their ships,
And never suffered so much for the joys
Of poetry as this one, for great heights bound,
Once he made up his mind to stake his all.
Your story made me dream, when I was young,
That anyone could do the thing you did -
Through sheer bursting love for words and truth
And life, break through the dismal bond
Of ignorance and youth, to reach the stars beyond.
I too consider my origin uncouth,
But, like you, loved to turn the dirt for what is hid
Beneath – small treasures in the stones among -
Load every rift with ore! You taught me that,
As you taught me perseverance and belief.
At twenty-five you died not knowing that your name
Had not been writ in water but inscribed in stone,
Through your own passion. At twenty-five my own
Story runs counter, as my poetry’s flame
Has given way to arts of healing and relief.
Dare pace myself with you? Forgive me that.
For ’twas a time indeed, I took John Keats
As measure for myself, I thought with him to race -
My head was filled with jostling aches and dreams
And I too strained against the heavy chain
Of mortal mind, and leaden pen; my grain
Perhaps too coarse. Though bursting at the seams
I found I feared I could not keep the pace,
And left the chase, too proud to be like Keats.
One life to live only, and I fear to fail.
I fear to die, like you, thinking I had not reached
The mind of another, that my words will not be read,
That my labour will be lost. I am not as brave as you.
I have not the same capacity to woo
Melancholy; not in her lair to tread.
The ore in my life shall be that gently leached
By acts of service, not wordcraft that may fail.
See how I cavil though your sun is strong! -
I may imitate you in another wise;
Your zest, your jokes, your care for kith and kin,
The pleasure that you took in sight and sound.
Although I have a different playing ground,
May I, with the same amount of life, put in
All that you gave, and more, in different guise -
To serve, though my name will not live as long.
