Tony Harrison

from A Kumquat for John Keats

Now were you twenty five or six years old 
when that fevered brow of yours at last grew cold? 
I've got no books at hand to check the dates. 
My grudging but glad spirit celebrates 
that all I've got to hand's the kumquats, John, 
the fruit I'd love to have your verdict on, 
but dead men don't eat kumquats, or drink wine, 
they shiver in the arms of Proserpine, 
not warm in bed beside their Fanny Brawne, 
nor watch her pick ripe grapefruit in the dawn 
as I did, waking, when I saw her twist, 
with one deft movement of a sunburnt wrist, 
the moon that feebly lit our last night's walk 
past alligator swampland, off its stalk. 
I thought of moon-juice juleps when I saw, 
as if I'd never seen the moon before, 
the planet glow among the fruit, and its pale light 
make each citrus on the tree its satellite.