AUTO-DA-FÉ



Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well kept vow.
- John Betjeman, “The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel” (1937)

The rebellious soul has its reasons,
the body has its lumbering lusts,
aching for the tingling surface contact
of a body not its own…
shivering in the shame of rectitude.

The sex is over once you’re shot your load,
the difference is, love can never let you go,
and even when it’s through with you

it won’t come to any good.


First published in the New Zealand Listener, 15 May 1999.

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