(After Baudelaire)
Two writers savaged each other: reviews,
Letters to the Editor, then a brawl at a gallery
with broken glass and shrieking socialites –
youth, drink, vanity, sexual rivalry.
Soon it’s teeth and claws and pulling hair,
curses, a skull thudding on the floor, more
broken glass, insults: ‘Brown-nosing your way
into the colour supplements! Fraud! Failure!’
In the back alley haunted by thugs and junkies
our heroes rolled against a garbage bin,
punching, the air full of grunts and shouts:
this alley is the hell of writers, crowded with
ourselves. Fight, gossip; go on: write it up,
so our sordid quarrels will become immortal.
-- John Tranter
