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Sport 39: 2011
Taking Keats to Paradise
Taking Keats to Paradise
He was waiting in Glenorchy,
hunched in a coffee shop corner
bone thin, his eyes drowning,
chest caved in, his breathing tight.
Time was against us. Around
him the shadow of age hungry
for youth and a lover’s heart,
behind him the blood red sun
beginning to set, the black
silhouette of mountain peaks,
towering, remarkable, the lake’s
icy tongue advancing.
Keats in the passenger seat
of our car, grasping at sips of air,
the windows down, autumn
and evening fanning his high fever.
When the road ran out of seal we
were sent a sign; 12 kilometres
to Paradise, no exit. Our low slung car
jolted on every rut and stone, on his
lips the red of beaded bubbles. We
darted through the changing scenes
of near meadows, winding streams,
moss that hung from ancient branches
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of wild beech, at Diamond Lake
the last finger of sun burning
and beckoning across the gleam.
Keats sinking to drowsy sleep,
his face the pallor of powdered
snow, we slowed the car and bathed
his brow, passing through the River
of Jordan ford, opening the Gates
of Heaven where fantails flickered late
in falling light, singing their plaintive
chant, their high requiem in Paradise
under the first bright star of night.