I want to turn to some newer stuff.
I'm incredibly lucky to--
a few years ago, somebody wrote a private message me
on Facebook, and said, "We run this painting school
at a former 16th century monastery.
But we'd like to have a poet there.
And would you possibly consider coming to Italy?
We will pay you to talk about poetry
and lead a poetry retreat."
I was like, OK.
I had no idea who this person was.
But, of course, I was immediately in and so
that's turned into something I've done three times now.
We're going back again this coming summer.
So if anybody's interested, I actually have some postcards.
So that's my advertisement for the reading.
So of course, while I was there with my students who
were running around all these hill towns
and going to various places, I did a little writing.
And one place we always visit is the Keats-Shelley house
in Rome-- which is the house that Keats
died in-- at the bottom of the Spanish steps, where he went
with Severn, an artist friend of his who accompanying him
to Italy hoping to help cure his tuberculosis.
But as we know, it didn't work out that way.
This is called, "Still time."
In Severn's letters Keats is still alive,
though coughing blood.
One day he's better, then things look very bad.
And if you stop reading, he's still lying there,
calmer again and clearer before they take his body out and burn
the wallpaper.
In books you fall in love with you always slow down
a few pages before the end.
But then there you are, with only the back cover blurbs
that say, "This story will make you cry," and maybe
an outdated photo.
When you photograph the famous fountain,
the water stops moving.
But water never really stops moving.
Your plush lion swirled away.
Your parents floated off.
OK, but also, that wine stain on your shirt
only looked permanent.
After the horrifying bats in the cenote,
little gold-flecked fish appeared.
You finally stopped sobbing in the bathroom at weddings.
You can't go back to 1821 and invent streptomycin.
Or stop the poet's kindly doctor from bleeding his patient.
But you can climb the stairs to that room in Rome
and see the flowers on the ceiling--
the same one Keats held for weeks in his fevered gaze.
That's as close as you can get.
Go home.
Your miserable bitch of a neighbor
is gone, carried out, and never to return.