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Show 11 ' .: jk- If ' ( . . :.,-- ' ' . ,, ' . v..;.AV: '' farther down, away beyond the incline. Over there the moonlit trees were thick; I remembered them in late daylight. A wall? Some sort of wall, and trees beyond it was like a park, and no bombs had mutilated that particular arbored thickness, no guns had flashed there. cannot set what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs I had been drugged with sleep, I was past 40, I was anesthetized with middle-age- d slumber because I had been trying to keep up with men who were young enough to be my sons. The body had balked and groaned, so had the brain. Nor can I now identify the moment in which I first realized the nature of the fluting and knew that I was listening to a nightingale . . . In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless My hands and feet were trembling, arms and legs jellied. There was one awful moment when I thought that I had leaned too far and might topple out of the window. Because emotion was warring with memory; and both emotion and memory were being called to account by common sense. No, no, it couldn't be a nightingale, this wasn't yet summer ! Hold on, wait a minute. Yes, there was the recollection of something read, one time, barely ' ' r ' . . . 1 ; '.-- .'',.-.- . 'J . you ; and never fly and never sing for you again." I could quote from the poem, but only in fragments; couldn't put the thing together as was needed sorely. Music had ceased "upon the midnight, with no pain." Finally after trying to sleep again, I got up, drew the curtains, turned on the lamp, and hunted among generous bookshelves lining the walls. Soon I found the poem; it had to be there, I had to find it I lay upon the bed and felt the religious experience of reading slowly that entire ode in its antique type. And witnessed the date 1819 and marveled again; and knew that it was spring when Keats wrote those lines as if t retained . . . nightingales were apt to reach Enbut seldom sang after gland by and always were gone back to Africa by the end of summer. Yet I wondered again : "Am I imagining, after all? Is it because the weapons were too fearsome, too calamitous and Might not a man be demanding nightingales merely because the cruel monstrosities have ceased? Could there be a more luxurious contrast?" And I remembered how the flak was still red-hwhen it came down, spitting and bounding off the pavement; and those sloping settling piles of structural garbage, with raw laths sticking up, holding scraps of worn lace curtains and cabbages and broken bottles and wrecked portraits, all smoking together; voices of the ARP men saying, "Quick, Geordie. Thought I 'eard someone under 'ere . . ." Had this awareness sent me butterfly-chasin- g after mockingbirds and nightingales? it was There, there ! Over among the trees moving, singing on the wing. It yodeled a prayer and exultation, it cheerily screamed its apology for the wickedness of a war now ending. "I am opening a door for you," cried the nightingale. "A very gentle door, and you must move with tenderness and appreciation as you come through; or else I shall go on and on, and leave mid-Jun- e; mid-Apr- il, bass-voice- d? ot ... a rightingale were singing them outside. Possibly a couple of years before he made his sombre journey to Rome . . . consider an inconspicuous grave near the pyramid of Caius Cestius. Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water. Light oozed around edges of the curtains. I'd fallen asleep again, with the volume of poetry beside me and draperies still drawn. I barely had managed to turn out the lamp, that was all. So I climbed up, dragged heavy cloth away from the windows, and saw sunrise. A thought came: If I were to go out and walk these slopes, I might hear it again. The nightingale does sing in daytime, too, they say, just as our mockingbirds at home sing both by day and by night. And always when their hearts tell them to." Perhaps I'd meet the creature and could fall down and bless its sad and patient colors. Then, so help me, ensued one of those moments which sparkle like magic metal through the heavy ore of a lifetime. For after I'd tiptoed down long stairways and let myself out at the front door and arranged the locks so that I might get back in again ; after I'd cut diagonally across a completely empty Btreet and stolen along a wall, I came to a turning. And distant color of a house could be Been through the gateway, trees, and unkempt bushes. There was a small plaque. I bent to read it, and suddenly the world was swimming. Here stood, bravely unhurt, the house of John Keats. Bombs and rockets had spared this shrine. It lived, with its line of soloists protracted and rejoicing through 126 years. A nightingale inhabited John Keats' own garden, and it had flown and sung and was the first nightingale I ever knew. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! Family W$kly, January 5, 1989 S |