from

A Flame on the Spanish Stairs :
John Keats in Rome

Douglas Barbour

I know now I always wanted to write, to
find a way to release the dreams
that spelled desire onto the page
I loved letters from the first for what they
cannot hide — their own palimpsests they
exist in multiple layers of time
without even thinking about it that is what
poetry means to me now          &
without desire nothing's written but     death
eternal to keep us apart.    Oh, there must be
poetry to remember beauty by     & for me at least
half that beauty is your body    flush with
the soul within      but never mine to hold
day or night you are but imagination's grace

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at least that's how it seems       coughing the
last of my breath redly out in
the backstreets of Rome         then the very
idea that we could have shared our bodies
has an air of desperate folly      I have
grown much worse lately          & I dream
so much of you          yet I grow
monstrously weak       only my imagination soars
beyond the mundane details of
my slowly approaching death        all is a
seeming        & there you glow        the
power of your body, your eyes & smile
of welcome once       now lost to all
attainment     —      only my heart still wishes

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