Abortion on an Attic Floor
“Some kill their love when they are young”
The flailing Arthur slumps against the wall.
He doesn’t have his lover. There’s no sex.
He thinks his poetry is in free fall.
Inside his chest and soul Rimbaud suspects
It’s finished. (He had to call on mummy
To rescue him.) However, what disturbs
Him most is not the death of his crummy
Poetry but that now he’s teaching verbs
In Berkshire not that far from Reading Gaol.
What Oscar then in Oxford would have made
Of all this mess is probably as pale
As gilded lilies in a Catholic shade.
Arthur’s verse career is a miscarriage
….Like Paul’s and Oscar’s attempts at marriage.
