"Lyric and Narrative" by Eleonora Nord

To Keats: The Immortal Young Poet
I am in the cemetery of non-believers among
the banished and obsolete.
It is autumn and the streets are stained yellow
as the Sahara bleeds through warm winds.
They say green is most vivid before it dies
in this immortal city where death is a mockery.
Nothing vanishes.
Nothing is temporary.
You can see his tombstone through a
deliberately placed hole in the wall-
a foreigner who died on foreign steps
whose last request was to be untraceable
as shadows to the ground.
Eyes that virtually saw past him now stare
in acknowledgement of an existence once
rendered anonymous by those who
knew him in life.
And I wonder…
What is the cost one must pay to be
rendered immortal?