Dissecting Keats

Come friend, let’s go to where it all began: Where you eased the heart ache and eased the pain. The window’s warm light, embering darkness. The intoxicating sawdust sets the scene: In succulent reds, butchers dress With neat laced mince-trays trimmed by hedging green. Strangers inveigled into its warm light, All seduced by the still unravishing flesh. All Senses aroused with intense delight As dulled minds were made alive and fresh. Mondays were butchery days, dreaming of distant lands: Slicing, sawing and cutting endlessly. A bitter chill froze fingers and clenched hands. Huge frozen livers numbed limbs tremblingly. Your verse learned by heart pulsed through each red vein As winter’s blackness cloaked the shop. The brisket bones snapped and cracked like dry cane, You in shadows hid, but whispered at each chop. As lambs were routinely quartered and hung, You were the voice that would never cease; A poetic and melodious tongue That among the strain and grind was at ease. As blood red blocks were scrubbed with metal teeth, My light spirit, you were my scarlet pain. Buried deep, a green and living wreath, You were beauty in a joyous refrain. The steep hill now drags home with black tarmac. Even here fever and cold pinch and sneeze, As the path is pebbled by winter rain, I dream of Grecian art as my balls freeze.