England’s Inoculation and Therapy for the Virus Called War, April 4 and St. George’s Day, 2015
Fate slapped him in his face and carried on
With tattooed beauty on its fingers, palm,
And skin much longer like a lingering dawn.
His sonnet read out loud as if a psalm
In London’s main cathedral by the Dean
On Easter from the pulpit days before
The poet’s death on Shakespeare’s date, was seen
By all the next day in The Times. Fate’s sore
Was opened, though, by one mosquito bite
Upon the poet’s lips. It killed him like
No kiss that Brooke had known, not in a night
With Denham or Tahiti, like a spike
Or bayonet akin to what Brooke shoved
Up toward their hearts, those two whom he had loved.
~ Phillip Whidden