Night To Remember

The Night to Remember

a sonnet composed by The—not a -- night in gale

commemorated in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”



First, I-- no, first, middle, and last--reject

your impolite, defaming, brutal name

you heaved on me a year before, in fame

but ill, you left for Rome. Now I eject

the trivial “a” you thrust on me, and set

the ancient record right: it’s you I blame,

you alone, for filling me with shame-

as one of many, “a,” blocking the fête

embroidered in my rightly given “the.”

1819 painstakingly I built

a nest, not so you could compose “a” poem

in just one day to ane “night,” not me.

You wrote your longest ode not to “a” Milt

or Tom or Will: to me, “the” sole, night tome.