[Arthur Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde were born four days apart from each other. They both died and are buried in France. Wilde arrived as a student at Oxford at the same time that Rimbaud was abandoning poetry and teaching French in the large house of his employer in Reading, Berkshire, England. Many years later, long after Rimbaud’s death, Wilde was sent to prison in Reading and put in a solitary cell and forced into hard labor for two years. It is a short stroll from that jail to Montpellier House where Rimbaud had worked and lived.]
Each Autre
Four days apart their births and just a few
Miles separating them, these two young men,
Though geniuses, were destined not to screw
Each other. One was setting down his pen
Forever, giving up on poetry
In England as the other took his rooms
At Oxford. They would never even see
The other’s face. They met their final dooms,
Though, both in France. In Reading Gaol, a stroll
Away from Rimbaud’s room in Reading, one
Declared his genius in the title role
Of victim, solitary as a nun.
The glitter plays of Oscar on the stage
Were doppelgangers of the other’s rage.