“Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards / And seal the hushèd casket of my soul”

Poetry Monday continues with a poem about a poet.


Writ in Water, Stella Gibbons

What stronger rune to be written in?
Seething, or locked in arcane permafrost.
Sans water, man would shrunken be, and lost.
His very substance is of water made,
Of water, and of dust.
Within its cloudy depth, secret and warm,
Shapeless and colourless, his primal shade,
A pulsing jelly, burgeoned into form.
Three days he can exist without the thin
Life-making flow. And music, in full streams,
Pours down all hills, giving voice to dreams.

Sweet boy, bright star eclipsed at twenty-five,
Your genius erred in thinking water humble—
Rivers shall run while Earth herself's alive;
Iron rust. Stone crumble.


Yes, the same Stella Gibbons (1902-1989) who wrote the science-fiction classic Cold Comfort Farm and 22 other novels. Her first book was a 1930 collection of poems, and she published two more in the 1930s. The “sweet boy” is of course John Keats--she's arguing with his epitaph and “bright star” is an allusion.)

ETA: Forgot to mention, but this should probably be understood as a variant sonnet form -- with ad hoc rhyme pattern and occasional short lines, plus a turn later than usual -- as doing so makes beefs up the "bright star" allusion (to another sonnet).

---L.

Subject quote from To Sleep, John Keats.