The Poetic Life

Among School Children

She’s not my daughter, this granddaughterI’m waiting for outside her school.She’s just some version of the perpetual me,the one I give up to become a manold enough to be telling you this tale.

I need to tell the truth now: the golden airholds autumn leaves the wind keeps threshing, windI felt under my feet this morning, waking,wind waiting for me, my next, my next.

But not until now, three p.m., the sunconsidering its arc into the darkawaiting, gold to match the leaves’ motion,not until now could I give wind much thought.

I will not be here when she plays this scene herself,I shiver, but I’ll tell this to you, Wind.You send these little leaves of yours skywardwhere you send everything—and, oh, the blue—whoever has seen blue the hue my sky assumessuch few moments, my extended waiting?

My granddaughter—that red scarf, crooked smile—opens the crowd of five-year-olds: she’s here.I have one breath to finish up, quickly:

What years I’ve given, looking up, sky-struck,the cloudless blue moving, motionless.Could this be how, maybe, eternity may move,time nameless, to those on the other side?

At Keats House, Hampstead

Sometimes I think beauty is all I have.This moment, just past, when I realizedI won’t, this visit, probably this life,see the writing table where John put down“Ode on a Grecian Urn,” arriving too latefor entrance, the gate locked, no one in sight.This is the moment I make up beauty—it has to be silence of six p.m.,Hampstead, the cobblestones washed with green rain,a child passing by clutching mother’s hand,a beautiful child, a little girl.It could be one of my daughters years back.The child’s words—I happy—this is Truth,isn’t it, Beauty, or just sentiment?No, this is Truth; the two, one, he says,the voice-over entering the poem,the radiance of John Keats in the street.

Rites and Privileges

Privilege of living? Only for a while.After that we join the eternities,return as someone we could never choose.I never asked to be Peter Cooley.I’m only in this body for a time.

When I was here before, I supped with Yeats,the man who supped with Donne; shared battlementswith Caesar; conquered Cleopatra’s breasts;before that was a playmate of St. John—I was not gifted with his propheciesthough I played in the dust with the Christ child.

This morning why should I fear death at all,as I begin to, reading the crime page?The door swings shut, another door opens:that instant you’re afraid you dare to askas I asked before I became Peter:This time could I be just a simple man?