Light's Ladder

<p>In this extraordinary new collection by distinguished poet Christopher Howell the opening poem presents us with a spiritual paradox that will echo throughout its pages. The speaker remembers an earlier time of happiness freedom and a certain innocence. The poem closes with:<br/><br/> And if he remembers now<br/><br/> he is in love which is the soul’s condition and alone<br/><br/> because that is how we live.<br/><br/>How we live is the book's major inquiry; its illustration the poems' major achievement. How do we live in our dailiness in our loves our private and global wars? And in the face of unbearable grief how can we live?<br/><br/><br/><br/>Keats<br/><br/>When Keats at last beyond the curtain<br/><br/>of love’s distraction lay dying in his room<br/><br/>on the Piazza di Spagna the melody of the Bernini<br/><br/>Fountain “filling him like flowers”<br/><br/>he held his breath like a coin looked out<br/><br/>into the moonlight and thought he saw snow.<br/><br/>He did not suppose it was fever or the body’s<br/><br/>weakness turning the mind. He thought “England!”<br/><br/>and there he was secretly for the rest<br/><br/>of his improvidently short life: up to his neck<br/><br/>in sleigh bells and the impossibly English cries<br/><br/>of street venders perfect<br/><br/>and affectionate as his soul.<br/><br/>For days the snow and statuary sang him so far<br/><br/>beyond regret that if now you walk rancorless<br/><br/>and alone there in the piazza the white shadow<br/><br/>of his last words to Severn “Don’t be frightened”<br/><br/>may enter you.</p>