When I have Fears.
When Keats had fears that he might “cease to be”
before he’d written all his mind could hold,
he recognised that his infirmity
might rob him of the chance of growing old.
The lucky youngster never lived to see
coevals gradually lose their grip
on memory, on personality
and the last precious dregs of scholarship.
He never got to watch the tragedy
of shared affairs no longer making sense
between good friends, nor feel the absentee
tottering into total nescience,
so he could not have understood that what
I’m most afraid of is that I might not.
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