Love is my Religion (From Keats To Fanny Brawne, 13 October 1819)

I

You have ravish'd me away
By a Power I cannot resist,
I become humbled,
The nearer to your grace I exist.
If Love is my Religion
Then you have become my Christ
And, until the ever turning
Hands of time desist,
I worship your body, mind and soul
Your ever-faithful priest.

II

Born again,
I am an ex-smoker
Exhaling virtue.
Your love has become my religion
And there are posters of hyperbole
Stuck up outside my church.

I can now often be found in shopping centres
With a microphone and your photograph
Shouting into the wind.

I knock on doors and tell strangers
All about you
Offerings of tea becoming more and more rare.

Each poem I write now
Is a sermon
To you.

III

Reasoning against the reasons of my love
For you
I may as well be arm-wrestling God
For all the good it will do us


IV

My Love is selfish and it is cruel. It will not let me sleep until my eyes have the outline of your body, which is curled up next to me like a spider in a bathtub, burned indelibly, so that when I close them, my lids become cinema screens, playing your movie on a loop until the sun bleaches the morning
And you stir, and reach for me.

My love is selfish.
And will not let me be
My love is selfish.
(Just
as love
should be)