Defeating the Gloom Monster

Remembering Lee Harwood (1939–2015)

After your life died and your work lived on,
you moved from a rented flat in possibility
into more permanent lodgings all your own.
So many rooms, so many habitable poems
with views of a movable city, days sweeping over it,
mountains behind, and a red sun setting fire
to an abstract of evening, suspended and controlled
by a palette of articulate desire.

A naked sensibility clothed lightly in learning –
just what appeared before your eyes
ought to have been enough. But then
there were all those other worlds you had to open
keyed into notes and quotations –
fantasy places you wanted to visit,
never places where you really wanted to live:
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