Notwithstanding your Happiness and your recommendation I hope I shall never marry. […] The roaring of the wind is my wife, and the Stars through the window pane are my Children.
—To George and Georgiana Keats, October 1818

Wind

He’s married to an autumn wind that roars
through clashing branches of the sycamores
and scatters their last leaves across the sky.
And like the wind among the sycamore boughs,
a roaring wife can strain a husband’s vows
to breaking point. But every wind will die
away. When he’s delivered from the storm
the poet is at liberty to form
new unions that seem brief and yet defy
the centuries; for when a poet binds
himself in words he also binds our minds
to his. And he is freely bound to try
wife after wife: a man who has been kissed
by poetry is a constant bigamist.

Stars

Except in that near-equinoctial lig ...

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