When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain; . . .
John Keats (1818)
Squinting at the dark end of the tunnel:
“What is it that I was supposed to do?”
I ask myself. Life, that tapered funnel,
Shrinks each bright prospect, tinges hope with rue.
But I am old. You, John, just twenty-three,
Decide the main thing is mere poetry
(Figured as reaped grain stored in granaries),
Thought food, illuminating mysteries,
When you might have sought (as most young men do)
A righteous fuck! What strange disease so warped
Your wants, constrained ambition to pursue
Posthumous fame, despite a world so fraught?
Admiration, I suppose, is what heads
Pursue—(a published poem, a frolicked bed—
Both leave the lusting ego swelled, well fed)—
That Holy Grail we seek before we’re dead.
(6/3/08)