He was the old Oscar Wilde, exophthalmic, looking too thin. He told me that a conspiracy of gentlemen pedarists had ruined him. “The trick,” he said, “is to reshape the shield of irony into a plough–Whitman told me this.”
It is marvelous to have the unconscious as a field.
Day comes. The sublime notations of sleep are half erased. I can’t remember what else Mr. Wilde had to say. I remember there was a small house beside a ruined orchard.
I assume the dream continues outside the waking man. Small, black, 19th century sheep are eating the windfall apples. Wilde stares at the fast moving clouds.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 