vicissitudes
From: The Keats House, Rome, Italy
Dear Mr Healy,
Thank you for your poem. We at the Keats House are also antsy about guests not paying for their stay and this is why the curator has decided on the policy of advance payment.
If you do still wish to stay in the first floor apartment, please forward your fax number or postal address. If I do not hear from you by the fifth of March, I will make those dates available to other interested parties.
Regards, Jane Hobgoode.
Assistant Curator.
From: The Chateau de Healy, Ireland
Ah Jane.
Little did I dream when I first formed the intention of sojourning a brief while in the house where John Keats met his death, little did I dream when your first tender information letter winged its way into my heart, little did I dream I say, that such a paltry thing as money should ever come between us.
Now I feel an odd perturbation within my spirit. I am strangely distrait.
Like Lady Caroline Lambe when Lord Byron told her to get knotted, and she went flop bott and cracker dog.
At last I know what it is to suffer.
But I am made of sterner stuff than Lady Caroline Lambe. Someday I will learn to live with this great chasm which has opened up between us.
Anyhoo. A man like me probably had no place staying in the house where the second greatest poet of the past five hundred years went croakies. (Modesty prevents me from naming the greatest.) I would have been picking up signals from the other side, channelling Shelley who only ever wrote one good poem, and generally not sleeping.
And so to parting.
All I have to cherish is a picture on the Keats House website of a cracking blonde bird who might be you, welcoming Prince Charles on a visit last year. Charles is smiling cheesily. And I don't blame him.
By the way, I bet if Prince Charles asked for the apartment on credit, it would be: "Oh yes your highness. Certainly your highness. Three bags full your highness."
But I digress.
I am sending you another of my poems Jane.
It is the last thing you shall have of me.
James Healy
PS: Unless you are the cracking blonde bird in the photo with Prince Charles. In which case, ignore all of the above. I hereby confirm that I will take the apartment. I am forwarding advance payment immediately.
farewell
grief should have no power
over babe child or man
we defy as we walk
the cruel pathways of the wasteland
tonight you walk with some new friend
through the hallowed portals of a distant city
his beginning is my end
i ask no pity
but that with the sun a dying flame
once more and for the last
you murmur
my name
Dear Mr Healy,
Thank you for your poem. We at the Keats House are also antsy about guests not paying for their stay and this is why the curator has decided on the policy of advance payment.
If you do still wish to stay in the first floor apartment, please forward your fax number or postal address. If I do not hear from you by the fifth of March, I will make those dates available to other interested parties.
Regards, Jane Hobgoode.
Assistant Curator.
From: The Chateau de Healy, Ireland
Ah Jane.
Little did I dream when I first formed the intention of sojourning a brief while in the house where John Keats met his death, little did I dream when your first tender information letter winged its way into my heart, little did I dream I say, that such a paltry thing as money should ever come between us.
Now I feel an odd perturbation within my spirit. I am strangely distrait.
Like Lady Caroline Lambe when Lord Byron told her to get knotted, and she went flop bott and cracker dog.
At last I know what it is to suffer.
But I am made of sterner stuff than Lady Caroline Lambe. Someday I will learn to live with this great chasm which has opened up between us.
Anyhoo. A man like me probably had no place staying in the house where the second greatest poet of the past five hundred years went croakies. (Modesty prevents me from naming the greatest.) I would have been picking up signals from the other side, channelling Shelley who only ever wrote one good poem, and generally not sleeping.
And so to parting.
All I have to cherish is a picture on the Keats House website of a cracking blonde bird who might be you, welcoming Prince Charles on a visit last year. Charles is smiling cheesily. And I don't blame him.
By the way, I bet if Prince Charles asked for the apartment on credit, it would be: "Oh yes your highness. Certainly your highness. Three bags full your highness."
But I digress.
I am sending you another of my poems Jane.
It is the last thing you shall have of me.
James Healy
PS: Unless you are the cracking blonde bird in the photo with Prince Charles. In which case, ignore all of the above. I hereby confirm that I will take the apartment. I am forwarding advance payment immediately.
farewell
grief should have no power
over babe child or man
we defy as we walk
the cruel pathways of the wasteland
tonight you walk with some new friend
through the hallowed portals of a distant city
his beginning is my end
i ask no pity
but that with the sun a dying flame
once more and for the last
you murmur
my name
posted by heelers | 2:36 AM
4 Comments:
i am certainly delighted to find this blog.
i laughed so hard i cried.
Namaste'
Sorry that didn't work out for you, James, but it was a noble effort. I'm proud of you. :D
James, you are incorrigible.
Namaste Kim, welcome.
Gen, I'm still going to Rome. I may even pay the Keats House museum a little visit!
Schnee, I'm going to get Anthony Hopkins to play me in the film version.
James
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