Consoling Tones for More Sad, Sad News
I recall, as so many others would,
what some claim to be the final song’s lines
that I had recited numerous times.
If we had only read and understood
those lines practically written in Keats’ blood
as he lie in a bed waiting a touch of ice
while beautiful Italy shined outside
in a quaint village set on a rocky slope.
The lapis lazuli sea does not coax
as he gasped for breath while he bled inside
hemorrhaging where no one else could see.
The mind may sing, but the body is broke.
I think of verse, this mild, frivolous art,
and how many die of a broken heart.
The shock I felt this Sunday morning while reading the headlines about the tragedy in California was heartbreaking. I am generally out of the loop of the news, so I did not hear about the event Saturday and had spent the day working and the evening studying.
From my reflections this morning, I recalled my own day Friday when I had returned to my room after a long and grueling week. I was feeling a poignant sense of depression and dejection. I had a tough week and a number of disappointments during the day. I spent most of the evening reading Shelley’s Adonais which is an elegy mourning the loss of John Keats. It is a poem I have read a number of times through my life and I often turn to it for comfort. After reading the poem, I sketched another song for a musical that I have been working on which depicts the troubling times of coming of age. Shortly there after, I retired to sleep around midnight completely oblivious at what was about to ensue on the other side of the continent.
When I read the headlines this morning, my sadness of the event was embodied within reflections of Keats’ final months. I often consider the tragic loss of his life and wonder what more magnificent poems he could have composed, and with this, I often think of how tragically Shelley’s own poem The Triumph of Life was cut short and incomplete with the loss of his life. Then I consider the loss of life in the tragedy on Friday and reflect that the victims were just kids themselves and had a whole life of wonderful opportunities and accomplishments ahead of them.
Regarding the event, this sad and simple note offers no explanation; it extends no blame. I only offer what meager means I have to express my condolences and bewail the tragedy in another senseless loss of precious life.
Garrett Buhl Robinson is a poet living in Brooklyn. www.garrettrobinson.us
