Oscar Wilde Richard Ellman
I am not, as I once claimed, Oscar Wilde. I lost the green coat—the
one I wore to America, with tufts of fur falling out of the collar,
with shapely cuffs. I lost the books (their dedications), shoes (the
tipped ones, the ones you lace right up to your britches), and the shape
of my wife’s mouth when she said it, when she called my name,
even that, even when I didn’t come, is lost.
And because I am not Oscar Wilde, because someone’s body is thinning
in the dirt, I can still say this. I can say, through this blue sheen,
that he (Did you know they found shit smeared on the sheets of his bed?
That boys young enough to climb stairs climbed the stairs of his suite?)
that Oscar Wilde bled from the eyes and mouth right before—
And I wonder (justly) if something might have exploded there, in his
head, maybe something in the ear, something eating straight through.
Maybe it was a little itch, a syphilis, that scratched the eyes’
interior. A disease that lived inside the tongue and the skull couldn’t
hold it, couldn’t (either he or the wallpaper had to go).
Oscar, if you place a glass of water on the bed, someone is bound to
knock it over. The boy will spill it, the boy will capsize—a beautiful
Greek boy—he will ride the sea’s black coattails all the
way down. Your hyacinth, Oscar, will break the vase, break every part
of the vase, out of beauty.
So Oscar pushed up his shirtsleeves and (there, there are my hands—now
take them) let them lead. The law. He listened (he never listened
before) to the funny sound that hunger made, the crescendo, the bells
turning up their skirts, the throttle of his throat, the ropes of his
intestines wrung out. During the course of two years (it was only two
years), the buzzing began. It was one prison, then another (there were
only three); and he grew too large for the space, for a cell suited
to the taking and leaving of prostitutes. He was too large for such
of ceiling, for the blur of windows placed just below the ceiling, for
all things having to do with penance.
He wanted to read Dante in prison. He wanted the darkness he squinted
into to take a form, any form, to become black pages, one after another
ruffling under his fingers. He wanted the weight to shift from his right
hand to the left, and then the book would end like an accordion squeezed
shut, finally silent.
He wanted to learn Italian, so after prison the words would not appear
misplaced. He wanted to ride of the back of those words, to stuff himself
into the new tongues forming around his teeth. I will write a play,
he said. And he didn’t. I will write a poem, he said, and it was
bad. I have forgotten everything he said, and the slits of eyes stared
back at him.
Maybe there will be new boys. New cigarette cases. Lectures. He thought
this, but No. His wife changed her name and died. He never looked at
his children again. He held a hand mirror, held it over his anus and
strained to see. And in this thinning hair, in this new kind of bankruptcy,
there was nothing to send to the children in prison, the ones locked
up for shooting rabbits. For them, he had nothing.