Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

News from Rome

The rumour that Keats is dead.
A poet itching verbs
like tattoos into his skin.
Limbs stitched into his bed.
The furniture chopped and burned,
the pink house sweet with smoke.
Severn destroys the umpteenth draft of his letter,
the legend is still absurd,
these names sinking in stone.

A letter to London takes one month.
A letter to me takes 183 years.