I thought it would be interesting to explain my poem to you Since this poem is so to speak a collage of historical incidents I thought I'd give a little background info to clarify things for you. (khalas ba2a the label of nerd/weirdo has becomed permanently affixed to my head )! enjoy !
1-blue china acolyte : in his earliest days at college wilde is reported to have said "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." hence blue china acolyte
2- "The heart was meant to be broken" if memory serves this came from 'an ideal husband" not very sure though
3-“cupping his Egyptian cigarette” once upon a time ,in the 19th century Egypt produced the world’s finest cigarettes and Wilde being the refined man he was delighted in them . He once said of cigarettes “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?” also check out this extraordinary
short story by Kate Chopin
4- “a mad boy with a rose petal mouth”: here of course I’m referring to Lord Alfred Douglas “Bosie” the cause of Wilde’s down fall ,one of the letters used in the trial against Wilde was written to Bosie and ran thus “Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music of song than for the madness of kisses. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days”
5-“A sighing love”- this is from Lord Alfred Douglas’s infamous poem “two loves”
6- “childrens kisses” Wilde had two sons , Vivian and Cyril whom he adored And who inspired his exquisite children’s stories which were collected in “a house of pomegranates” the worst thing Wilde experienced was loss of the right to see his children after his release from Reading Gaol
7- Amber scented champagne – I took this from "De Profundis” the 90 page letter he wrote to lord Alfred whilst in prison
8-'Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the midnight hours Weeping and waiting for the morrow, - He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.' This was written by Goethe and often quoted to Oscar by his mother Lady Jane Wilde
9- “The wanderer he became” after his release from prison Wilde spent the last three years of his life in L’hotel d’alsace in Paris. He went under the assumed name of Sebastian Melmoth, after the famously Saint Sebastian and the devilish central character of Wilde's great-uncle Charles Robert Maturin's gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.
10- “duelling with wallpaper
he or it had to go!” Just a month before his death Wilde is quoted as saying, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."
11-“a purple clad priest at his side” On his deathbed Wilde became a Catholic
12-“he had been killed
by the thing he loved
By each let this be heard
neither by sword nor kiss
but with a careless word”
This is an adaptation of Wildes famous poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol”
