One Brilliant Spot on a Poet’s Pillow
| [It used to be that there was a notice in Keats’ House, Hampstead, London, beside the bust of John Keats set on a pedestal that said that it had been tailor-made to make the top of the bust reach exactly to the height of the poet. A notice by his bedroom door quoted from his diary/journal a brief passage about his having had to spend the day riding on top of a coach exposed to terrible weather and then changing into his nightclothes and settling into his bed in that room and having a coughing fit. This paroxysm caused him to expel a single spot of blood onto his pillow. Because he had nursed his beloved brother George through his fatal course of consumption, and because Keats was a trained surgeon, he wrote, “I know that colour. It is my doom.”] The bust of Keats stands on its pedestal Inside a room that stinks of reverence Like some cathedral chapel that was full Of chanted litanies, prayers, and incense But now is just for incurious eye To glance at, atheistic glimpse. They come Who’ve read an ode or two when forced to by An English syllabus. There is a hum Of dullness displaced by a lock of hair From Fanny Brawne. At least that is the aim. A notice by his bedroom says that there He realized the spot of blood would maim Him to his death. John Keats was sonnet small: Writ on calamities, he stood five foot tall.
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