Keats, St. Pete's

Reading over the texts I send while visiting the rooms where John Keats spent his last days, I can't commiserate with Higgins when he laments conversations with women. "You want to talk of Keats or Milton," he whines to the Colonel, "she only wants to talk of love."

Keats was buried on my bday.

More happy love! more happy happy love! 4ever warm and still 2 b enjoyed, 4ever panting, and 4ever young.

I'm alone, but sharing via the miracle of SMS. The above is Keats, by the way, and sent from a man to a woman. Why can't a woman be more like a man?

The rooms, literally on the Spanish steps (first building on the right as you're looking up the steps), now house a research library about Keats, Shelley (both PB and Mary), Byron, and some contemporaries. Lists of British and American expats living in Rome at the time line the stairs as you enter, the host is a frazzled middle-aged British lady unsure how best to manage her two grad school interns, the entrance fee is small, as is Keats' room. The view is worth bragging about.

I picture myself teaching Keats someday, a classroom full of lazy, hungover college kids in pajamas. "Search for the moments," I tell them, "the Im watching night fall over the Spanish steps from keats writing desk moments, reading Ode to a Nightingale to the song of tittering mulititudes of travelling teenagers, amorous lovers locked in a precarious embrace." They yawn and eye each other up, more anxious to be the lovers than the lone reader; when can I awake so I may seek another drink?

U and I have already outlived this guy. I'll drink to that.

St. Peter's Basilica

The crèche outside is huge, lit up in many colors. The manger changes every year, apparently. Half the set was designed and sculpted by a Filipino artist to show the universality of the Church. The crèche inside is smaller, more colorful, and designed in Oberammergau.

Of course it's huge-the whole place is. Standing among the gigantic pillars, the cupola so dizzyingly high, the long arms stretching powerfully on either side, I almost laugh aloud as a song enters my head: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.

Do I want to ask the question of whether it was worth it to cheat from so many millions of sinners indulgences to build this Duomo? Was the arrogant threat of damnation upon the collective souls of bankrupt kingdoms worth the stadium-sized cathedral, so enormous the intricate artwork from floor to ceiling blurs before my eyes?

Or do I wander on, content in the assertion of the Grecian Urn, that truth is beauty and beauty truth, and allow the age-old art to breathe its own life into me?

But truth be told, I think little about the poor medieval illiterates so abused. And the beauty does speak to me, but the closed prayer room calls more loudly, and I assure the guard I came to St. Peter's to kneel.

The ancient words so lately learned whisper from my lips. From my corner I see I padre with Nicaraguan features. I see a nun, and then another one.

"Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy."

I tiptoe out, leaving truer pilgrims to longer prayers. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spritus Sancti. Amen.

Entrance to the Church, by the way, on like 7 billion levels, is free.