Death Bed Poetry: Oscar Wilde
“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.” — Oscar Wilde, 1900
I imagine him lying there,
in that Parisian room that smelled
of absinthe and unfinished prayers,
as the wallpaper trembled
like a cheap imitation of eternity.
The angels outside the window
were adjusting their wings,
uncertain whether to take him
or simply applaud.
He was pale,
but his eyes still carried
the phosphorescence of theatre
a man who had turned irony
into a religion of silk and ruin.
“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do,”
he murmured,
and the sentence hung in the air
like a final chandelier
lit by the fever of genius.
Somewhere, far below the city,
Beauty shifted in her sleep,
feeling her lover leave the room.
And I think,
when he died,
the colors of the world dimmed
just slightly,
as if the Creator Himself
had paused,
considering
whether the universe, too,
was merely decorated too loudly.
But death is never sudden
for those who live as mirrors.
It unfolds like a curtain,
slowly revealing
that the audience was always inside you
that the clapping you heard
was your own heart closing its wings.
Even now,
I imagine Wilde wandering through Heaven,
correcting the architecture,
teaching seraphs about irony,
and writing with light
on the wallpaper of infinity:
“Perfection is merely a sin
that learned good manners.”
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