Aug 2018
You clutch a dazzling pink rose
In front of the Spanish Steps.
The last of the day, bartered
For a bag of M&Ms.
No money changes hands.
No promises kept.
No way to go but headlong
Into the crowds.
Tramping on tourists, staring at horses,
Thinking Poesy past the Keats House,
Piazza di Spagna 26.
Life mask, death mask.
Walls of poetical works bound
In shiny green leather.
Romanticism dies on the short, striped bed,
A sleigh ride to the Elysian Fields.
Awake to sweet unrest.
Here is my ode
To a rose not fading unto death.
Bright colors of the Steps.
No struggle for a breath.
In front of the Spanish Steps.
The last of the day, bartered
For a bag of M&Ms.
No money changes hands.
No promises kept.
No way to go but headlong
Into the crowds.
Tramping on tourists, staring at horses,
Thinking Poesy past the Keats House,
Piazza di Spagna 26.
Life mask, death mask.
Walls of poetical works bound
In shiny green leather.
Romanticism dies on the short, striped bed,
A sleigh ride to the Elysian Fields.
Awake to sweet unrest.
Here is my ode
To a rose not fading unto death.
Bright colors of the Steps.
No struggle for a breath.
John Keats is regarded by many as England's finest Romantic poet. He is most famous for his "Ode to a Nightingale." He moved from England to Rome in seriously ill health, thinking the southern climate would be good for his tuberculosis. He lived only a short time in a house immediately next to the Spanish Steps, one of the main tourist stops in Rome. Keats died there when he was 25. His house is now an excellent museum on his life and the life of Lord Byron, another Romantic who also died quite young.
(M/Kansas)
Please log in to view and add comments on poems
