Each Autre
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
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.
[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.]