A song composed whilst researching John Keats with an
imminent visit to The Marine Theatre in Lyme, home of
local heroine Mary Anning, famous for her fossil-hunting
I’m going to Lyme Regis, is it Dorset, is it Devon, soon I’ll know.
I’ve been told there was a fossil-finding woman of Lyme Regis, long ago.
She sold her finds as curios.
She sounds to be somebody most intriguing
but my curiosity’s directed elsewhere at the mo.
I’ve been going through the poetry and letters
of a man who didn’t have sufficient time.
A man who walked on Hampstead Heath in autumn
with his vessel full of Mister William Shakespeare and the fruitfulness of rhyme.
John Keats, with your days laid out so meagre,
it is no surprise
how eager was your pace.
John Keats, you stuffed your notebook, rather than your ego and your face.
John Keats, wild about Will Shakespeare
but I’m not sure if you’d heard of William Blake.
John Keats, your muse was both a marvel and in terms of making money, your mistake.
John Keats, you sat outside on coaches
it encroached upon your health,
your wealth did not provide the funds
for you to settle in the dry
you’d have preferred.
John Keats, you did the doctor’s training
but decided you were cut out for the word.
The first I heard you mentioned was in a Loudon Wainwright song
then, in a another one by Morrissey
I didn’t know your legacy,
but, still I sang along.
I’ve been going through the poetry and letters
of a man who later than his life
was so much better known.
A man whose pay day came too late for him to get a ticket
to get sat inside the coach
instead of getting wet and windblown.
Up beside the driver,
a man who was no skiver.
But the world it can deprive a
man, no matter what his feats.
Can I lend you a fiver, please?
John Keats.
John Keats, you wanted to complete a life that was held completely in the grip of poetry, because poetry you held to be most naturally holy.
John Keats, you suggested that a poem should come out complete,
as certain and as surely as a leaf upon a tree,
but preferably,
not as slowly.
Did you used to walk the dog?
Did you have a dialogue?
While the dog did what it had to do
did you share a verse or two
And were they the doggie’s treats?
John Keats?
The London Borough of Hackney
18.iii.2012
Dear John Keats,
Last Thursday, I was round your house in Hampstead where I bought a book of letters you had written in the early nineteen-hundreds. I was with Celia. It was really a lovely afternoon and we took tea on your verandah, on the bench.
And slugging on that mug of tea,
it would be unknown to me
that in my bag and in your book,
there you are John, slagging off the French manner of speaking.
It’s my father’s native country.
It’s my father’s mother’s lingo!
You went into your toolbag and you went in with a spanner and a cheeky monkey-wrench,
when you were slagging off the language of the French.
Is ‘slagging off’, a turn of phrase you know, John?
Do you like DIY or Dan Defoe, John?
I’d like to meet you sometime and to have a good old natter.
Do you use powder on your teeth, are you a hatter on The Heath?
John, you may be miles away,
in spite of which, I’d like to say
John, je suis si enchanté,
’scuse my French
P.S. It’s some days later and I realise it’s not just the French, is it, John? No, you are not too keen on the people of Devon, either. One letter says the battle of Waterloo would have been lost, were all Englishmen Devonians. And then the Scots, you say they are comparatively clean but they never laugh. I told this to a Scottish friend, who said, ‘That made me laugh, but then, I’ve got some Irish in me.’ Let’s not go into what you say about the Irish!
