Wilde
was
treading
the penal
wheel (not the penile—
don't be immature!) all the while
dreaming of Bosie, the very one who put him there.
He
wrote
him De
Profundis,
(which Bosie shredded—
nota bene: know your reader!)
Luckily the original had been stashed away.
I
felt
for Wilde
till I learned
he took Bosie back.
(Where, my friend, was your self-respect?)
But who, outside a couple, can understand its ways?
Both
men
became
Catholics.
In faith as in sex,
one either gets it or doesn't.
I believe, though, in Wilde's harsh credo of suffering:
A
life
that knows
only joy
fails to ripen us—
just as some trees need flame to seed.
With Wilde's help, I ponder this and other mysteries.
