1954
Monday, the seventh of June
Each man kills the thing he loves
By each, let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword
As Alan had once quoted Oscar Wilde
It could be the brave man who did it with a sword
The inquest established that it was suicide
While the balance of his mind was disturbed
He was in a corner
He had always been prepared to confine his fight to his own personal space
The space that others chose to allow him
But by now, he was left no space at all
For him, not only had the personal become the political
But the political was the personal
He had been engaged in a profound conflict between innocence and experience
There was a Shelley in him, but there was also a Frankenstein
A proud irresponsibility of pure science
Concentrated in a single person
He had a lack of reverence for everything except the truth
It had been his trouble all along that
Although driven by the desire to do something
He wanted to remain ordinary
To be left alone in peace
These were incompatible goals
And there was no consistency in him
Only in his death did he finally behave as he had begun
The supreme individualist shaking off society