The Last Days of Sebastian Melmoth*
The sun down this narrow Paris street creeps
and squares a small field of large
magenta blooms on the wall
in this room.
These blossoms do not green
or grow, but fade in the daily path
under the golden steps the sun takes
travelling the wall
to finally fall on this table
where no writing but begging will be done.
Even the friendship my pen once held for me
has gone and the afternoon
rises on dust in the shaft of sun
that shines and illuminates the fading blooms
where I, alone, room—
waiting patiently for the evening post,
for the last slipper of sun
to leave the last petal,
desert the plain table
and disappear into the dusk, ah,
where absinthe and lust
wait for me down the narrow Paris streets
in the arms and eyes
of warm brown boys
whose arrows of love
martyr me.
[*Sebastian Melmoth was the name
Oscar Wilde assumed in exile after
being released from Reading Gaol.]
From I May or May Not Love You, originally published in The Bloomsbury Review.
