Robert Rorabeck - How Rupert Brooke Died

I must remember to tell mother that I found out
How Rupert Brooke died. We heard his poetry on the
Radio as we passed through Albuquerque, just
Two poems before we stopped to get gas and corn
Chips. He died of sepsis from a mosquito bite, before
He had a chance to see that action which was his
Pageantry: Only twenty-eight, and considered beautiful,
And I have found his poetry the same, undiminished
After a near century, after the body that wrote it has
Flagged into a cenotaph somewhere in fair England.
Now I try to figure out where to go, and I read Rupert
After the sun is down and the dogs are snoring. I have
Come back from my sister’s wedding, and all the little
Souls gathered there to see her off down the next avenue,
Freshly shaved and perfumed we went in the finest
Revelries of twilight. Now, depending on how it goes,
I may move to Saint Louis or Saint Augustine by the
Middle of next year, and I look at diminishing real-estate,
Something I can put my quiet art inside, and thus repose,
And not long afterwards, hold a kiss to the fragrance of
Her possibilities, and raise children there, and tell them how
I found out how Rupert Brooke died, and then hold them
To my lap and read to them the words of a dead young man;
Pressed tightly into the beating of my chest, they might
Come to know what it all means to me, how such twilight
Echoes even through the youngest estuaries....

Robert Rorabeck

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