Inkling
an online journal of poetry and prose

04/13/09

A F T E R    F I G H T I N G

Severn found this place for him––

a willow in the western corner,

rows of cypress dark against the sky.

Graves in a line like hospital beds,

Keats rests near a whitewashed shed

littered with rakes, tin watering cans,

the broken lyre on his stone

not the symbol Severn thought

but Fanny's seal.

The mismatched rhythm of our steps

disturbs the tended gravel path.

Again, we're quiet after fighting.

It is January in Rome, the opacity

of winter sky is light

above the ancient walls. Our damage

unclear and unrelieved by passion.

You wake in mornings curled around

the absence of my shape.

I see from a distance,

down a crowded row of gravestones,

an angel draped across a tomb,

one arm loose against the air;

her wings are large and slack with grief.

Her body reaches forward

as if she had thrown herself

down on a bed, crying, one hand

reaching toward this world.

Emelyn Story, carved by her husband

who followed her death with his own

ten months to the day. Their marriage

lasted longer than Keats' life.

I imagine her husband

picking up his tools again,

tapping his grief into stone,

the careful, chiseled knocking,

hammering back to her youth,

hammering back to that purest

of wanting. I didn't know then

what such love required.

"After Fighting" originally appeared in Prairie Schooner.