PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The surgery was rather hard on him.
We brought him back to the ancestral estate.
The Great Room had been fitted out for the
aftermath:  the huge bed carried down
and placed in front of the roaring fireplace.
More than the Stuart's prince's coming in,
I remember that recovering High Church poet---
that now frail body (slit from throat to groin
and then sewed up and patched like some worn cloth)
beneath a heap of blankets, head propped up
on special pillows he had once purchased
from France or Italy (I am not sure).
During each day's brief bout of consciousness,
before exhaustion caught him once again,
he listened to requested readings from
the books upon the adjacent table:
old Luther's Bible (sometimes thought of---
by worldly men---as a mistranslation,
against the Stuarts' version); after that,
the Bissula, and then the Argonauts.
These were the volumes that he most preferred,
and in the order listed.  These last two,
he had once said, must be epyllions
(whatever that means; I did not inquire).
John's Gospel---on the certainty of faith
believing saved unto eternal life,
believing, just believing, into Heaven;
and then the girl who had inspired some poems;
and then the journey to achieve a prize
(and not without adventures on the way):
these were the consolations that he sought
out of those books.  I often wondered:  when
he fell back utterly spent, and his eyes
closed in profound slumber of injury's
after-effects, what poetry was formed
among the images that filled his dreams?
 
Starward
 
[jlc]