Atomic Shadows. Poetry. Death.

Several years ago, while in Rome, my wife and I were near the Spanish Steps, and while standing there I noticed a small house adjacent, with a sign noting that it was John Keats's house. It was, in fact, the house where he lived in his final months, and where he subsequently died.

The house is maintained as a museum. It's small, with a narrow stairway leading to an upstairs hall, itself narrow and of no great length. A door opens from the hallway into a study - book-lined, with simple, comfortable furniture in keeping with the early 19th century aura. There are a few letters on display, and drawings too, by one or two of Keats's close circle of friends. 

Despite being next to a major tourist attraction like the Spanish Steps, the room, which overlooks the area, is quiet. The immediate sensation is that one has entered only to find that the gentleman has just stepped out for a moment; a more overriding sensation is that one should sit and wait patiently for the gentleman's return.

Apart from the dutiful steward, a young, quietly spoken woman, we were the only visitors.

The nearby bedroom was also small. I can't now recall, whether a doorway leading from the bedroom into the hallway was in place in the poet's lifetime, or if it was a later addition. In any case, this is the room where John Keats died.

The room's only light source seemed to be from a tiny window, and my wife suggested that she photograph me standing near there, where the light was better. At the time, I had an old, film-format  35mm camera ( I said it was a long time ago.). I think the exposure dial must gave been accidentally knocked to an extreme setting, which, together with the strong localised light source on the wall behind me, created an image that when developed later, gave pause for thought. 

There are well-known images photographed at Hiroshima in 1945 after the first atomic bomb was detonated above the city. Where people were standing, in areas in the full force of the blast, their bodies had vapourised, leaving a telltale shadow effect on nearby walls or pavement, as though they had disappeared so quickly their shadows were somehow left stranded in the last known position of the persons.

My image seemed to float on or above the wall, not as the image of a person with a wall as background, but somehow part of the wall itself, held there by the Roman light.

Today, I overheard someone mention 'nightingale', I think as part of a local effort to determine nightingale numbers in the region. I never hear this word in any context but that I don't think of John Keats, his early death and the promise lost to us now, thence this reminiscence of that quiet place, books, old furniture, light, shadows drifting.