Nº53 In a region of mists…
Or background work...
I’ve written an essay every week for a year. Over the past ten weeks I’ve been charting the last days of John Keats. We begin again today, on the brink of spring, as I go in search of the poet’s ghost in Rome. I’m gonna keep posting these weekly articles until I have written one for each of my subscribers. So this one’s for you. Yes you. You know who you are…
27 Feb, 2026
Keats-Shelley House,
Piazza di Spagna,
Rome.
Dear ***** , Arrived last night, on the anniversary of the funeral, when (and do stop me if I’ve told you this story before) in 1821, a small cortège made its way through these very streets at dawn from Piazza di Spagna to the Cimitero Acattolico in Rome where the mortal remains of ‘the young English poet’ John Keats were interred. Yesterday the sun shone, “for the first time in months,” according to a local. I’m quite sure he was exaggerating but his friends seemed to agree, draining their espressos, adjusting their shades in expectation of better weather ahead.
Today it’s cloudy, overcast, just as it was when Johnny K first arrived. I thought I might be overdressed, coat, jumper, hat, still wrapped for a long London winter. I’m told it’s warmer there now I’ve left. I’ve brought the colder weather with me it seems. The sun comes out when I leave, goes in when I arrive. I pull my collars up, think of John, on these steps, out here, on one of his better days, wondering if he’d make it through, last until the better weather came. He brought the clouds with him too. I wonder if he ever considered if it had all been worth it, if he should have stayed home, done the decent thing, got a proper job, been a doctor, married Fanny, raised some kids, slipped quietly into obscurity.
The Piazza is full of tourists. They are all out filming each other, all trying to manoeuvre to a spot where they’ll just get a shot of themselves on the steps and no one else in the frame. None of them are successful, they are all in each other’s photos while posing for their own. Later they’ll all star on each other’s social media feeds. Some pictures will get one hundred ‘likes’, one may go viral, others will get no reaction at all but they will all look the same, more or less, just people standing around in a crowd, being bland and simultaneously incomprehensibly unique.
I begin to move around the steps just to see how many pictures I can appear in, how many videos I can star in. I don’t do anything daft, I’m not photo bombing, I’m doing background work, just filling in, milling around, trying to be as natural as I can. I take it seriously. It’s like writing, it’s like finding that line, trying it out a dozen times until it feels authentic, until it floats unnoticeably just above the ordinary. That’s what I’m doing here. This is what I decide I’ve spent a lifetime doing: floating unnoticeably just above the ordinary.
Who would live in the region of Mists ... when there is such a place as Italy?
Did I tell you, before I left, I went to see John’s statue in Guy’s Hospital? I had wanted to be in Rome for the anniversary but couldn’t make it work. Winter Olympics, prices sky high. So I thought I’d just sit with him in London for the evening, be with him when his final nighttime came. I arrived in the afternoon and found someone had beaten me to it. There, curled up on the bench next to him, a street drinker, cracked lips, reddened face, beard, snoring like a distillery. John didn’t seem bothered. Well of course not. He just sat with him, watching over him, looking out for him, looking after him.
I asked John if I might take a photo. He said nothing and didn’t protest when I went ahead so I guess he thought it was OK. I took a few pictures. I just kept clicking, trying to manoeuvre to a spot where I just got a shot of the poet, frozen in bronze, glistening in the day’s rain. I tried to ignore his companion sleeping it off until I became aware of something else, a presence behind me, someone else watching on.
I turned and saw Crick, standing there, shaking his head. You’ve met Crick before. He’s the guy who gets on your train, walks between carriages, makes a brief, inaudible announcement then comes around with a paper cup. Usually he gets nothing. It’s only you or I who’ll put something in, a few coins, whatever we can spare. But today he’s here.
He doesn’t approve of what I’m doing, seemingly taking pictures of his friend passed out on a bench.
“I’m trying to be respectful” I say, “I’m only taking pictures of the sculpture.”
Crick shakes his head.
“He was a poet,” I say.
“I know who he is,” says Crick, “you oughta leave ‘em both alone.”
I decide I have enough photos and put away my phone.
“It’s the anniversary of his death,” I say, “I’m supposed to be Rome but…”
“I know what it is,” says Crick. And then he goes into his speech, the one he delivers in train carriages, the one he gives outside petrol stations, at the doors of supermarkets, wherever he can find an audience. He recites his carefully rehearsed poem, the one that ends with a paper cup being offered up.
“I don’t have any money,” I say and Crick looks at me in the same disdainful way that most people look at him. He gives me that look that is a mix disbelief and disgust, that says it’s impossible not to have money, that it’s unnatural not to have money, that it’s offensive not to have money.
Tomorrow I’m giving my talk and I’m going over my own carefully rehearsed poem, the one that ends with a paper cup offered up. All poems end with a paper cup being offered up. The difference is whether you expect to find anything in it.
Luca arrives to show me the apartment, takes me through the process of opening and closing and locking the door to Keats-Shelley House. He hands me the keys to the pantheon of the poets, leads me to where I’ll be staying, a flat directly above the room where Keats died. Luca can’t stop. Today they are paying staff wages, reviewing contracts. I think of offering up a paper cup but it seems inappropriate. The door closes and I am alone the with the ghosts. I go to the window. The Piazza is full of tourists, all filming each other, all waiting for the better weather to come.
