The Jacket-Pocket Keats

 

Joseph Salvatore Aversano

 

 

 

“The boat went down so quickly that Williams did not have time to kick off his boots, and Shelley thrust a new copy of Keats’s poems into his jacket pocket, so hard that it doubled-back and the spine split.  This much was clear (but not much else) from the three bodies cast up along the coast 10 days later: they could be identified by their clothes, but not by their faces.” 

 

— Richard Holmes in “Death and Destiny,” The Guardian (24.01.2004)

 

 

 

 

I.

 

 

nadir

high

 

the

first

 

of

the

 

light

glow’d

 

earthly

 

 

 

 

II.

 

 

fainted

wings

 

folded

flowers

of

 

the

grass

still

 

blown

 

 

 

 

III.

 

 

in

all

shells

 

ear’d

in

 

shape

the

found

 

voices

of

 

one

roar

 

 

 

 

IV.

 

 

on

isles

 

still

unheard

of

 

 

the

bards—

 

 

their

great

quiet

 

hymnèd—

 

 

die

content

 

 

 

 

V.

 

 

beauty

has

 

its

mists;

 

its

mists

 

have

their

 

mortal

loves

 

 

 

 

VI.

 

 

the

stars

 

and

spheres

 

blaze

completely

 

unharm’

d

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joseph Salvatore Aversano, a native New Yorker, currently lives on the central Anatolian steppe with his wife Asu.  His poetry has been recently published in Bones, Die Leere Mitte, is/let, NOON: journal of the short poem, Otoliths and Plumwood Mountain: An Australian Journal of Ecopoetry and Ecopoetics. Joseph Salvatore Aversano is online at JosephSalvatoreAversano.com.

 

 


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