"The last of your kisses was even the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest.”

Letters, John Keats to Fanny Brawne

 

His headstone verses were not writ in water,

They merely draw the eye unto the fact of death.

Bereft are the lines that love-and-only-love remembers.

All he knew was the deepest blue of sky 

In this one woman’s eyes. Love was written in the blood of Fanny Brawne.

She knew that mortal love will always end like this. 

Time and rain weather the stonemason’s art into a flat palimpest

Of hieroglyphics which resemble not the zest

Of pumping blood. Stones do not record the passing glance or look. Only words do that.

Shadows show  him kiss her eyes on a moonlit night, within the sounds of the sea.

Do not eulogise her tear-filled eyes as she stares into winter fires,

We must gather all the force that we can muster

To face this meeting with our fates on All Souls’ Day.