The Selfish Giant

The day is filtered slowly down in this dark place,
The walls reach out in the gloom and hoard it up,
The iron bars block all but the most persistent beam.
The table sits beneath the window, and catches a patch
Of the evanescent light, a single sunbeam steady pounds the stack of paper.

You were brilliant, you really were, my darling Oscar
You smote the very heart of convention, with your sparkling wit
Shaking the old whore’s confidence on her throne.
You came with thunder muted in your every footstep
And rattled all the teacups in the room.

An oldish seeming man sits bent over his paper,
Jealous of the pooling light. A pen is scratching
History out into examination booklets.
Venomous jabs and plaintive pleas, bloodlike,
Bleed from the stripe clad arm of the prisoner


You did all this, and yet, what had you actually done
But bugger the son of some rich aristocrat?
What great mountains of disdain, you could have scaled
And snubbed your nose at those crawling ants below
Yet you could not deny the siren call,
The sumptuous and decadent bait dangled before you:
The parties, champagne, the art, the boys.

The gaoler carefully counts the sheets and
Files them away. Wilde, a genius, sits and plays
At Peek-a-boo with sun dust in his cell. Three years of hard labor
Has ruined him for polite society;
Like a diamond, they’ve bent and crushed
The devil from him and he emerges a broken,
Gleaming man.