On The So-Called Death Of The Romantics Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: —Do I wake or sleep?
John Keats, from Ode to a Nightingale


the ones you left behind, leaf-torn, gold
in their weeping from their autumn boughs
are living still

in the currents of the winds that Shelley never bartered; that Keats died for-
eddying in the self-same streams

reflecting Infinite colours now-
in the glass children may see or not see
since the script has been hidden away-

made over into only a 'context', parodied.
and we're in a new play now, come see us!
the literati urge and preen and trample

on the past that was their legacy
in a hard-won language, cathedral built.
why must you strip the boughs of Poetry

that flourished here? I hear the poets ask,
however faintly- and then
beside the banks of all their streams I pause

and weep and cannot stop
for the brilliance of their crushed words
enchants me yet and

is hovering there, in the very air around us
as in old paintings, bookstalls,
phrases that have been turned against them

for expediency's dim-witted sake.
the brilliance of their crushed words
I have kept in my heart

and their fires burn as bright as
when they were here-
though in a coming landscape, more and more

I see the bulldozers in their pretty colors-
bereft of all sense-
waiting their turn

mary angela douglas 6 august 2014