Bury Him With Green Carnations

i.m Eibhear Walshe

On February 2oth,1892, Oscar Wilde encouraged his friends to wear green carnations to the opening night of his play Lady Windemere’s Fan. This symbol could signify homosexuality, dandyism, or “nothing whatsoever”.

 

Now that the curtain has brushed the floor, in this theatre,

let us gather those thrown ornaments, pluck from our lapels

what symbols we have to hand, “specks of mystic green,”

objet d’art, arsenic laced and beautiful, preserved

and nevermore to wilt. Let Oscar’s folly be the posey we bind

to remember that another good man has walked off stage

into the afterlife, he who taught us the dialects

by which we could recognize each other, the subtext

of wink and nudge, brush of moustache on a bare shoulder,

the subtlety of white lace and Greek recognizing Greek,

the danger of committing love’s embrace to paper.

Let this obituary be written down in lavender, dab your eyes

with the colour-coded handkerchiefs in your pockets

as we mark his abrupt departure. And who will teach us now,

that he has gone to the great salon in the heavens

where Speranza and Kate are waiting with a full decanter

while on the corridor we file passed his office door,

closed by him for the last time and never again to open.

 

 

Liz Quirke

 

 

 

 

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Elegy for Eibhear



Eibhear, my favourite colleague,

over 30 years and counting,

you made me laugh, and think and cry,

and always in that ordering.


You should have lived for many years,

always that one above me,

in terms of our living and loving well,

the gap was centuries.


When we shared that Italian bedroom,

during that week that changed the world,

and still continues to blight and bite,

the perpetual ruin that week unfurled,



you snored quite happily through the night,

Now Graham I have a cold! Remember!

Blithe Spirit dreaming about Bowens Court,

another Rome and last Septembers.



Life? Love? It’s just so ***** unfair.

you needed no telling, no instruction, back then,

that all our life’s best, enduring joys

are analogue and physical.



Now our machines keep us alive,

promising the end of dying,

censor our bleeding, our hopelessness,

our insufficient, hasty mourning.



So despite my sluggish fingers,

and despite my shattered eyes,

in flaming capitals, against the darkness,

I type it out, one digit at a time,



Life? Love? It’s JUST SO FUCKING UNFAIR!

 

Graham Allen