Keats's Handwriting
         
         
         In print, his poems look as inert as anyone's,
         reposing in the open coffin of an anthology,
         the type faceless and duplicate,
         every letter silent,
         the work finished, done for the day.
         
         But here on this thin sheet of manuscript
         in the tiny industry of his penmanship
         with its loops and flourishes,
         leaf' stems, broad crosses, and sudden dots,
         you can feel the quick jitter of writing,
         the animal scratching of the nib,
         even the blood heating in the temples.         
         You can see the light that must have fallen on the page
         from an orange candle or a stark winter sun.
         
         Magnified, every minuscule is a photograph;         
         every indelible accident is a trace of random life,         
         a moment caught in a spot or fleck,         
         the thin pen dipped and lifted,         
         a droplet of ink trembling in the air of the present.
         
         It is enough to make you inhale deeply,
         breathe in the brine of the whole century
         that held him in her rolling waves
         and lapped against the sides of his poems.
         
         And if you lean against the glass case,
         bending forward, as he must have over his page,
         you can almost see the white linen cuff,
         the dark sleeve and the warm, ruddy hand
         as if it were your own,
         as if your body could fit into his body
         the way the life of Shakespeare fits
         perfectly into the life of Cervantes.
         
         Then you could rise in the suit of Keats,
         walk in his garden, lie on his couch,
         the sear of English drowsiness.
         And every time you closed your eyes,
         you would enter a bower of eglantine
         or a liquid glade alive with nymphs.
         You would see in the inkwell's black pool
         a glossy lake, a musk rose blowing,
         night-swollen mushrooms,
         and the long, billowing hair of the Muses.



 By Billy Collins
         From the book "The Art of Drowning"
         University of Pittsburgh Press
         
         Copyright ©1995
         All rights reserved.
         Reproduced by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
         
                 
         The Art of Drowning
         by Billy Collins
         Price:    $12.95 paper
        ISBN#: 0-8229-5567-9 paper.