Keep your receipts, Mister Keats

A song composed whilst researching John Keats with an imminent
visit to The Marine Theatre in Lyme, home of local heroine Mary Anning,
famous for her fossil-hunting

I’m going to Lyme Regis, is it Dorset, is it Devon,
soon I’ll know.
I’ve been told there was a fossil-finding woman of
Lyme Regis, long ago.
She sold her finds as curios.
She sounds to be somebody most intriguing
but my curiosity’s directed elsewhere at the mo.
I’ve been going through the poetry and letters
of a man who didn’t have sufficient time.
A man who walked on Hampstead Heath in autumn
with his vessel full of Mister William Shakespeare and
the fruitfulness of rhyme.

John Keats, with your days laid out so meagre,
it is no surprise
how eager was your pace.
John Keats, you stuffed your notebook, rather than
your ego and your face.
John Keats, wild about Will Shakespeare
but I’m not sure if you’d heard of William Blake.

John Keats, your muse was both a marvel and in terms
of making money, your mistake.
John Keats, you sat outside on coaches
it encroached upon your health,
your wealth did not provide the funds
for you to settle in the dry
you’d have preferred.
John Keats, you did the doctor’s training
but decided you were cut out for the word.

The first I heard you mentioned was in a Loudon
Wainwright song
then, in another one by Morrissey
I didn’t know your legacy,
but, still I sang along.

I’ve been going through the poetry and letters
of a man who later than his life
was so much better known.
A man whose pay day came too late for him to get a
ticket
to get sat inside the coach
instead of getting wet and windblown.
Up beside the driver,
a man who was no skiver.
But the world it can deprive a
man, no matter what his feats.
Can I lend you a fiver, please?
No, make that a tenner, Sweet
John Keats.

John Keats, you wanted to complete a life that was held
completely in the grip of poetry, because poetry
you held to be most naturally holy.
John Keats, you suggested that a poem should come
out complete,
as certain and as surely as a leaf upon a tree,
but preferably,
not as slowly.

Did you use to walk the dog?
Did you have a dialogue?
While the dog did what it had to do
did you share with it a verse or two
And were they the doggie’s treats?
John Keats?