Uranian Vagabondage

URANIAN VAGABONDAGE 

“His Eminency says that you

may publish these naïve and

almost Dantesque and

sometimes quite Homeresque

fragments” —Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

I suppose my dears—

There’s nothing quite worse

Than Uranian vagabondage

Being a Born-Again Fag—

The object of gay derision

By the Queenly Pantheon

Feasting with Panthers—

Precociously Pater-esque 

In this Wildean wilderness

Like Baron Corfu’s—

Weirding of the Wanderer

Daring debutante once again

LETTER FROM VENICE

“Let it be known that I

was called in an age yet

to come Nicholas Crabbe

the Impossible”—Frederick 

William Rolfe, THE WEIRD 

OF THE WANDERER

How else to deal—

With the Slings and Arrows

Outrageous Fortune dishes out

Tableau vivants—

Venice delectations

Aschenbach’s laments

Boss Cupid Venice—

Androgynous Theater

Fag Film Noir Flick

Miss Auden says—

“Naughty, naughty

What would Mother say?”

REINCARNATION RAKE

“For I penetrated into 

the occult arcana”

—Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

Was it Sebastian Melmoth—

Or perhaps Sebastian Nabokov

Who gave me some advice?

The Vassar novelist—

Had read CHICKEN (1979)

Back in graduate school

“The Last Uranian”—

He signed his lovely novel

Now in my tall bookshelves

I do feel rather somewhat—

Ancient being a Uranian again

A Reincarnated Rake

ASCHENBACH-ESQUE

“to commune with

long-dead sages”

—Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

What’s worse, my dear—

Being a born-again Uranian

Or one for the first time?

Surely DEATH IN VENICE—

Is only one way to go there

Languishing in a beach-chair

Or pretending to be a Borgia—

Or a new Vatican Pope like

Miss Baron Corfu pretended?

I simply can’t really decide—

A closeted Aschenbach, a Borgia

Or perhaps a new Vatican Pope?

QUEER QUAGMIRES

“enduring unmentioned

and unthought-of anguish”

—Frederick William Rolfe

THE WEIRD OF THE WANDERER

Doodles and ditherings—

Fin de siècle fantasies

Tres rococo-esque, my dear

And yet what else—

Can I possibly do now

Daring descent and decline?

Lavish literary genres—

Decaying like human beings

English especially susceptible 

Why just the other day—

Detoured by some dithering delirious 

Diphthongs into a queer quagmire!!!