In Rome, at 26
        Piazza de Spagna,
at the foot of a long 
        flight of
stairs, are rooms 
        let to Keats

in 1820,
        where he died. Now
you can visit them, 
        the tiny terrace,
the bedroom. The scraps 
        of paper

on which he wrote 
        lines
are kept behind glass, 
       some yellowing,
some xeroxed or 
       mimeographed...

Outside his window
        you can hear the scirocco
working
        the invisible.
Every dry leaf of ivy
        is fingered,

refingered. Who is
        the nervous spirit
of this world
        that must go over and over
what it already knows, 
        what is it

so hot and dry
        that’s looking through us,
by us,
        for its answer?
In the arbor
        on the terrace

the stark hellenic 
        forms
of grapes have appeared. 
        They’ll soften
till weak enough 
        to enter

our world, translating 
        helplessly
from the beautiful 
        to the true...
Whatever the spirit,
        the thickening grapes

are part of its looking,  
        and the slow hands
that made this mask 
        of Keats,
in his other life,
        and the old woman,

the memorial’s 
        custodian,
sitting on the porch 
        beneath the arbor
sorting chick-peas
        from pebbles

 into her cast-iron 
        pot.
See what her hands 
        know—
they are its breath,         
        its mother

tongue, dividing, 
        discarding.
There is light playing 
        over the leaves,
over her face, 
        making her

abstract, making 
        her quick
and strange. But she 
        has no care
for what speckles her, 
        changing her,

she is at,
        her work. Oh how we want
to be taken
        and changed,
want to be mended 
        by what we enter.

Is it thus
        with the world?
Does it wish us
        to mend it,
light and dark,
        green

and flesh? Will it 
        be free then?
I think the world 
        is a desparate
element. It would have us 
        claim it,

receive it. Therefore this 
        is what I
must ask you
        to imagine: wind; 
the moment 
        when the wind

drops; and grapes 
        which are nothing,
which break
        in your hands.