 |
magine, if you will, that the spirit of
American poet
Walt Whitman mysteriously comes to life in an autographed first edition of his famous anthology,
Leaves of Grass,
shelved in Irish playwright
Oscar Wilde's personal collection.
Imagine, too, that the
ghost of Walt Whitman swears to make amends for a terrible injustice
done to the Irish playwright the forced auctioning of Wilde's beloved
library. |
(This came to pass
following a notorious scandal and court cases involving Wilde and his
lover, Lord
Alfred Douglas , or 'Bosie', as he was known. Wilde's books were
auctioned to pay his legal debts, after he went to serve hard labour in
prison for his homosexual 'crimes'.)
I would ask you also
to imagine that book passing through several hands, and ending up in
Sydney, Australia, while over many decades containing the outraged spirit of the American poet, who swears:
"Walt Whitman shall not sleep"
A poem by
Pip Wilson
This poem
assumes a little knowledge of Oscar Wilde's trials.
A good overview of these
is at Wilde's trial website.
Part One
1894
There were more
shades of red that spring
than you'd expect to see,
far more than in a carpet
of the Sheikhs of Araby.
Far more than are discovered
in the rubies of the night
were swimming
in that final dram of wine
by warm lamplight.
Just several drops of agθd port
were in the crystal glass
as Oscar Wilde considered
what a thing had come to pass.
He wrote in midnight's silence
when evening's motion ends.
"I saw you at the Savoy,
dear Bosie, with your friends.
Why will you not admit me
to your new society?"
and so on, till his servant
laid the breakfast and the tea.
Oscar and Lord Alfred Douglas ('Bosie')
A solitary ray of light
through the crystal and the port
was thrown from out the lamp's clear glass
and by a book was caught:
a slim morocco volume
on an oaken-timbered shelf
a pretty book, inscribed and signed
by Walt Whitman himself.
Walt Whitman
split a fire log
and swore a vile curse.
He fumbled at a splinter
Oscar Wilde's hearse
proceeded down a rutted road
past children at their game,
children who had never heard
of Oscar Wilde's name.
Oscar's back was to the
book
now lit by morning's light;
with kipper in his mouth
he commenced again to write.
Walt Whitman
leaned upon the beam
that was so warmly cast
by sunlight
on the first edition of his Leaves of Grass.
The playwright put his
pen down
and took a butter knife.
The servant heard the scraping
on the toast and Oscar's life.
The master took the pen again
so diffident and mild
and simply added to the page
"Sincerely,
In Leaves of Grass, page 21
a native yankee son
dreamed shopping lists of ecstasy
and let the rising sun
caress and tan his muscled frame,
then floated on a beam
to page 92 and 93
and back to 17.
1895
The creaking, grinding gears of doom
another orbit turned
as Oscar trod the treadmill
in Reading Gaol interned.
The warder came at half-past four
and led the playwright back
into the cell for Wilde to face
again the rising black.
Upon the bed of planks he lay
as day's chill slowly turned
to evening's cold indignity.
A desperate candle burned
within a cracked and sooty glass
that once had been a lamp;
the odour of the issue tallow
floated on the damp.
So Oscar pondered in the gloom
his solitary, cruel,
demeaning fate, and listlessly
he pushed a tin of gruel
a watery, fatty, salty mess
across the dirty box
and wept for his young children,
their honey-golden locks.
"Two firty-five,
two forty,"
the auctioneer looks
with eagle eyes,
"two forty-five.
Two fifty for these books?
Two fifty-five. Two fifty-five
Going
going
gone!
A bargain for these lovely books from
Oscar Wilde's home!
"The bailiff sent anuvver lot
you see upon this stand,
of nineteen first editions
with inscriptions from the hands
of famous aufors: Mister Keats,
one 'Border-lair', 'Arfa Rim-bound'
and various uvver foreigners
do I 'ear eighty pound?"
"Oscar
Wilde, 273,
Reading Gaol" it said.
Oscar slit the envelope,
its bitter contents read.
The Marquess's solicitor
intoned in accents vain
"Re matter of your debt, dear sir,
the following remains
"
1900
Walt Whitman tumbled from his bed.
the earth's foundations shook.
the porter repositioned
the fallen box of books
and pushed again the trolley
up the gangway to the hold.
the books of the late writer,
the bankrupt
Oscar Wilde.
"Lot 21, Some Books (19),
By Their Authors Signed",
within a dank and gloomy hold
to New South Wales consigned,
slept deeply as the poets
who lay beneath the sod
except for Whitman's Leaves of Grass:
the yankee son slept not.
Far from London, England,
and further from his home,
fitfully and restlessly
Walt Whitman crossed the foam.
Click for a contemporary illustration
of the Wilde-Douglas court case
Part Two
Above the red-tiled rooftops
a barbaric yawp was hurled.
Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass,
in the English-speaking world
and sometimes in Australia
by cultured people read,
in a Sydney customs storehouse
lay among the dead.
Although around the yankee
his companions all were deep
in death, for Wilde's injustice
the yankee could not sleep.
"If no amends are made," he swore,
"Walt Whitman shall not sleep!"
Joshua Thomas Bland, the surgeon,
placed the butter knife
back in the butter dish and passed
the butter to his wife.
The subtle, soft aroma
of oil of bergamot
wafted from the Earl Grey tea
and Bland said, "Is it not
superb to be in Sydney
back home at long, long last."
Mrs Bland returned his smile
and presently she passed
the butter to their youngest
who then pleaded for their help.
She needed no more coaxing
and spread his toast herself.
"My dear, with your permission,"
said Joshua Thomas Bland
"I'll entrust the freight arrangements
to your most able hands.
I shall be in my rooms all day
Just send McCree to town
To clear the remaining baggage
And bring the boxes down."
1895
Oscar told the journalist
The title of his play:
"The Importance of Being Earnest
begins this very day
but it will outlive you and me "
Wilde fixed him with a stare,
"I shall not live till judgement day
but Ernest will be there."
1900
Down York Street
in a carriage
drove Michael John McCree
past Wynyard Station's hubbub
and on to Circular Quay.
He did not notice many things
that warm September day.
The ancient tattered poster
for an Oscar Wilde play
escaped McCree's decrepit eye,
but hold him not to blame
like many a Sydneysider
he knew not
Wilde's name.
1988
Wynyard bus stand, York Street,
in 1988
(it was the 6th of June
for those who want the very date),
just where a tattered playbill
think back some ninety years
had flapped upon a pillar
in the mild September breeze.
Upon the seat a young girl
of fourteen years or so
pored over her new love affair:
a paperback Rimbaud.
Sydney, Australia
She floated over York
Street,
o'er Wynyard in her flight,
above the red-tiled rooftops
now blackened by the night.
She flew by foreign courtyards,
the wondrous and grotesque,
on pinions French and damasc,
on verses arabesque.
1936
Walt Whitman rarely
squinted
into a Sydney sun,
the red morocco bindings
by Joshua Bland undone.
Till 1936, at home,
Bland's family by his side
and thinking not of Whitman,
the old collector died.
2036
In London's outer
suburbs
in 2036
on stage, a school assembly hall,
a pupil painted bricks
of red and flowers of gold
and shrubbery of green
for The Importance of Being Earnest
the country garden scene.
1941
"A cup of tea?" asked Margaret Bland
"Or perhaps you haven't time?"
The buyer from the bookstore
politely did decline.
"My late husband loved these
volumes,
these books
that was before
but life is so expensive and
uncertain with the war.
"Anyway, Mister Morris,
There are others in the hall.
I'd rather sell the lot at once
so, how much for them all?"
Replied the buyer, "Mrs Bland,
we couldn't buy the lot.
I doubt that Lambert's could afford
one tenth of what you've got.
For these, however, and this pile,
some eighty by my count,
I think we can negotiate
an agreeable amount."
Some say he left the business
when he suddenly took ill.
Some say old Lambert caught him
with his fingers in the till.
Whatever the true reason
perhaps it was the war
with Morris gone, the books remained
on Lambert's store-room floor.
For forty years Walt Whitman
had lain awake, now used
to not being heard no matter what
barbaric yawp he loosed.
No matter Bland had loved him,
no matter Bland was dead;
what fame in being collected
and loved, but never read?
"Miss Rogers would you kindly see
just what these boxes hold,"
croaked Mr Lambert, Jr
(sixty-nine years old
and dusty as a volume
from Lambert's highest shelf
the Mechanical Drawings section
he was, inside himself.
Just as his books were second-hand,
so Lambert was within
all worn, all dry, all yellowed,
all used up, all unseen.)
"Mr Morris very possibly
left all these boxes here.
Please see, Miss Rogers, would you,
just what we have in there?"
Miss Rogers soon reported
to Mr Lambert out the front
"American and French books mostly,
I'd say. Where do you wa "
"Well file them under country,
Miss Rogers, I presume."
Old Lambert, Jr left her
For the far side of the gloom.
In the English Drama section
unless my senses lie,
there was the faintest flutter
of Oscar Wilde's eye.
"Fail them under contry!"
she mocked the wizened man,
"French letters on the French shelf
and Yank the American!"
Walt Whitman
took up residence
upon a shelf again
between President Harding's Memoirs
and A Salesman's Life in Maine.
Part Three
1989
In 1989 a girl
of fifteen years or so
was comparing 'Ulalume'
by Edgar Allen Poe
with a sonnet by Mallarmι.
While she sat with 'Ulalume',
her father called out "Do your maths
then tidy up your room!"
1943
One Tuesday, Lambert, Jr,
now aged 71,
began his working day just as
for decades he'd begun:
a new page on the ledger;
inspection of the shelves;
inspection of the shop staff,
one by one they showed themselves.
This Tuesday, around
eleven,
like the only ray of sun
that ever enters Lambert's
that particular, pallid one
that falls along the first shelf
in the dusty street display,
enough to light a book or two
so entered Mrs Ray.
She cast her eye around
the store,
Mrs Ray from Pymble East,
demanding service from the floor
a junior, at the least,
or preferably a senior gent
to attend to her desire:
a present for her garden boy,
a book for Kenny Squire.
"My gardener, young
Kenny,
like many lads these days,"
she said to Margaret Reilly
(Kath Rogers had left in May
and signed up for the Navy,
described "an utter failure"
by Mr Lambert but she thought
she'd rather serve Australia
than penny-pinching Lambert
and his cranky, ugly, penny-
pinching customers
I digress) "Young
Kenny,"
Said Mrs Ray, "my garden boy
is rather like so many
youngsters now, America
is all to them, and Kenny
will talk of nothing else the films,
their rather vulgar 'stars',
the dreadful rubber gum they chew
and those ostentatious cars."
Meg Reilly clenched her
Arrowmint
determined not to chew,
nor crack a smile, and tried to keep
her nylons hid from view.
Continued Mrs Ray, "But
still,
young people have their ways.
So, my dear, perhaps you've plenty
on America these days."
"Oh, yes ma'am, several shelves full,"
Meg Reilly did reply,
"May I show " "Just show the shelves,"
said Mrs Ray, "and I shall buy
a book myself, my dear."
To cut a saga short,
by now you'll have a fair idea
which yankee book she bought.
The hot December rays
fell on
Walt Whitman in the hand
of Kenny Squire that Saturday,
as Mrs Ray now fanned
her powdered face and stepped
back from her garden boy
into the red hibiscus shade
and watched initial joy
decline to mere politeness
when this Christmas gift she'd bought
for four and six at Lambert's
was not quite what he'd thought.
For when she'd
said "American"
to describe it, he was sure
the book he was unwrapping
was something on the war,
not some namby-pamby poetry
by some namby-pamby yank
no one has ever heard of
but Kenny
Squire said "Thanks".
Walt Whitman felt an Arctic wind
although the day was hot.
Ken loafed and leaned behind the shed,
but Whitman rested not.
For nearly fifty years awake,
no song to sing himself,
nor other ghost, nor human being,
on Kenneth Squire's shelf
unread, unopened, languishing,
the poet tossed and shook,
and each day felt the bailiff's hand
on Oscar Wilde's books.
Part Four
1991
"Grandpa, could
I borrow
this book of poems?" she cried
across the yard to Grandpa Squire
and Kenneth Squire replied,
"Of course you may. Which book?"
he called from by his pool.
"Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass," she called,
"We're doing him at school."
He swept a lot of grass and leaves
into a dusty pile
and stopped. "By gee," the lawyer said,
"I've had that one a while."
He walked across the perfect lawn
and met the girl halfway.
The red morocco caught the sun.
He heard the ghost of Mrs Ray:
"Happy Christmas Kenny
an American book for you".
Half a century of life
and houses crossed his view.
"You know, I doubt I've opened it"
he said, "in fifty years.
You keep it, you might read it.
If you like it, keep it dear."
Down
along a rutted road
down centuries of verse
down along a rutted road
drove Oscar Wilde's hearse.
She'd told a
minor falsehood
about studying Walt at school;
her teachers cared as much for poems
as she cared for their rules.
But studying poetry she was
as only poets can;
she loved Walt Whitman madly,
as though a living man.
That night, and after reading,
she to her bookcase took
a red morocco volume,
a jewel of a book
and placed it with the others,
alphabetically:
after Tennyson and Thomas
and Verlaine 'T' and 'V'.
And she, of lawyer, grandchild
and of a bailiff, child,
beside a dog-eared paperback,
The Works of Oscar Wilde,
found a place for Leaves of Grass
then to her bed she crept.
And as towards her bed now
with a sense of peace she stepped,
like a dreaming virgin
the weary Whitman slept.
© Pip Wilson 2000-now
Poetry Index
Note on my text
I have exercised a little poet's licence in my poem. The first edition of
Leaves of Grass (1855) (see picture immediately above) was brown in colour, not red . The third edition (1860), pictured at top of page, was indeed like the one I described in this poem. I didn't know all this when I wrote the poem.
A good overview of the Wilde trials is at
Wilde's trial website.
More on Walt Whitman
This
grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roof of mouths.
Song
of Myself by Walt Whitman
The Whitman Archive
Leaves of Grass text
The Development of
Leaves of Grass
More on Oscar Wilde
He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead ...
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
The Importance of Being Earnest text
Oscar Wilde links
Oscar Meets Walt (January 18, 1882)
A gift purchase helps this site stay online
