London in the 1890s

Is this the inception, the tremulous threshold,

The coming of a grand and lovely age,

Apogee of science,religion and society?

All is decay and senescence:

Generals draw up battle plans,

Hampered by hidden fear;

The batsman walks out onto the cricket pitch,

Knowing he is not up to it any more.

Heavily,in slow motion,empires fall.

The race is becoming degenerate.

Suicide is all the rage.



It’s the same the whole world over,


It’s the poor what gets the blame


It’s the rich what gets the pleasure,


Ain’t it all a bleeding shame?



Fellowships and societies debate,

Envisaging the changes to come;

Utopians,socialists and anarchists alike

Dream the world’s transformation

While the unemployed stand begging

On hopeless moribund streets.

At the premiere of “Arms and the Man”,

The entire pit and gallery break into laughter

Until,suddenly, they begin to realise

That they themselves are being mocked

And sit there,dumbfounded,bitter

And angry at this upstart author Shaw

Who dares to satirize their world.





Oscar Wilde returns from America,

His hair curled just like Nero’s

In the Louvre bust.

Salome dances like a flame,

And stoops to kiss the severed head

Of Jokanaan.



Lord Tennyson lies on his deathbed,

A copy of Cymbeline placed in his hands,

Opened at the page with his favourite lines,

Moonlight streaming in through the oriel window

To bear him away to Avalon.

All across Engand,from church pulpits,

Ministers lament the passing

Of an immortal, the conscience of the age.



I’ll sing thee songs of Araby


And tales of fair Cashmere,


Wild tales to cheat thee of a sigh


Or charm thee to a tear.



In the music hall darkness, night after night,

Arthur Symons sits,watching,thrilling

To the painted lascivious dancers,

The louche artifice of whores and ballet girls,

Oh so wicked, so alluring...

Then he strolls the promenade

And chooses his fancy,

An experience, a poem-to-be.

A flight from the dragons and harpies

Marching on Pariliament,demanding

Suffrage and equality.



After the ball was over,


She took out her glass eye.


Stood her cork leg in the corner,


Hung up her hair to dry.



The Importance of Being Earnest

Opens at the St James’s Theatre,

Dandiacal epigrams strutting

Through Uranian voids,

Feigning and doubling

With the glee of the doomed.

The author dines at the Savoy

With another rough young man

While at home Mrs Wilde is reading

The children a bedtime story.



I’ll sing thee songs of Araby


And tales of fair Cashmere,


Wild tales to cheat thee of a sigh


Or charm thee to a tear.