On the So-Called Death Of The Romantics

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

         Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

                Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

                        In the next valley-glades:

         Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

                Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

John Keats, from Ode to a Nightingale

the ones you left behind, leaf-torn, gold

in their weeping from their autumn boughs

are living still

in the currents of the winds that Shelley never bartered;that Keats died for-

eddying in the self-same streams

reflecting Infinite colours now-

in the glass children may see or not see

since the script has been hidden away-

made over into only a "context", parodied.

and we're in a new play now, come see us!

the literati urge and preen and trample

on the past that was their legacy

in a hard-won language, cathedral built.

why must you strip the boughs of  Poetry

that flourished here? I hear the poets ask,

however faintly- and then

beside the banks of all their streams I pause

and weep and cannot stop

for the brilliance of their crushed words

enchants me yet and

is hovering there, in the very air around us

as in old paintings, bookstalls,

phrases that have been turned against them

for expediency's dim-witted sake.

the brilliance of their crushed words

I have kept in my heart

and their fires burn as bright as

when they were here-

though in a coming landscape, more and more

I see the noveau bulldozers in their pretty colors-

bereft of all sense-

waiting their turn

mary angela douglas 6 august 2014