… the simple imaginative Mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent Working coming continually on the Spirit with a fine suddenness … O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! – Keats, LETTERS
It’s the same old song in the ancient tongue
(whether the table remembers the Word or not),
the same old reliable bedtime stories:
the hero, the virgin, the hill, the spear in the gut.
Four tales sung to a single tune:
the prince in the robbers’ den and the prisoner maid,
the terrible hill and the wandering wounded knight;
one tale sung to the four old tunes,
one thief slain by a band of virgins,
one spear and four terrible wounds.
Four songs for the king and his noisy table
(blind drunk, fighting drunk, or out),
four tales to the same terrible end:
the man, the maid, the mountain, the pain in the gut,
that last sweet ordeal, when the walls come down,
and the nerves like easy women in every street
tangle in their frail arms the gaunt invader,
man and maid and mountain rolled into one.
Like the last thrust of love, when the banging blood
stops dead, and you catch, in the same old dark,
your own thump and whisper in your ear,
two hearts drum to a single tune:
the song buries his bright head in your belly,
one shaft in one terrible wound.
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