I love English names, like Richard the Lionheart or Percy Bysshe Shelley. Richard’s heart, embalmed with frankincense, is buried at Rouen Cathedral; and Shelley’s heart—saved alone from the burning pyre on the beach in Italy—is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. Oscar Wilde, penniless and alone, died brokenhearted in Paris and is buried in Père Lachaise. Shakespeare is buried in the town he was born in, though he lived his life in London where the Great Plague killed his sisters, brother, and son. The Black Death shut down the theaters. London’s unholy darkness—the filthy streets, the diseased Thames—lit candles in the playwright’s heart and Shakespeare wrote his sonnets. I imagine the quill in his hand as he penned “to love that well which thou must leave ere long.” No one knows the dark lady who inspired his verse—how she lived or how she died. I’ve read Oscar Wilde confessed on his deathbed, as did Richard. The Great Plague killed rich and poor alike, their love buried by the thousands in church parishes and plague pits. “Out, out brief candle!” wrote the Bard. Shakespeare knew: no one remembers the names of the dead. But nonetheless the dead live, their shadows redeemed and their faces brightly lit because Shakespeare described the songs they sang and the wars they fought and the love that burned and blazed in their hearts.
Richard Jones is the author of six books from Copper Canyon Press, including The Blessing, A Perfect Time, and Apropos of Nothing. A new collection, King of Hearts, is available from Adastra Press. He is the editor of Poetry East, and its many anthologies, including Bliss, Paris, and Origins.