The Mountaintop

A Poem by Paris Hlad

The Mountaintop^{^[1]}

In Admiration of John Keats

I stood upon a mountaintop

And gazed upon the vale;

I watched the sun sink in the hills

And wonder did prevail

'It is a grace,' I muttered then;

‘It is both night and day,'

Then started back upon a path

That led me on my way.

I stood upon a mountaintop

And shivered in the chill

That seizes hearts like icy hands

That clutch what ones they will

'It is a grace,' I muttered then,

‘It is both night and day,

Then started back upon a path

That led another way.

[1] Several of the poems in this section deal with a similar subject matter and derive specifically from a conversation Paris had with his brother about the poetry of John Keats, particularly his most important poem, “Ode Written on a Grecian Urn.” Not long before he passed, Paris asked me to acknowledge his brother’s contribution to his work. He wanted it known that David helped him dissect what was dark and existentially complicated, steering him away from ego and intellectual nitpicking. There is a spilling of psychological blood in the discussion of such topics, and his brother’s sacrifice on Paris’s behalf was greatly appreciated. David was a thinker and avid reader who devoted much of his life to art and overseeing the operation of an imaginary baseball league that he founded after his first day in kindergarten.