Exiliterateurs; Or. Get Out!

W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden!
His gist...? To embroaden
his listing of homo-erotical 
mates.
So Wyst trysts: “Ta, UK! Ah-ha-a-aah: 48 
states!”

James Art’ur Baldwin
blames Harlem (“’T’sno Walden!”),
claims Paris as home. James, we wish you “bone 
chance!”
as you emigrate (ooh-la-la!) to (la-la!) 
France.

Joseph Conrad,
early on, had
shipp’d for shores foreign o’er oceans 
exotic,
thus aug’ring Joe’s heroes’ endeavors 
aquatic.

Dante!
Why can’t he
lie low in his most-favor’d 
nest (Florence)...?
‘Cuz revenge-fill’d Black Guelphs post ar-
rest warrants.

T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
bagg'd a Nobel. He at-
tain’d, more’s the pit, British citizen-
ship.
Critics (Kenner, for one) think Tom’s “Cool (as a) 
Whip.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald,
l’hot Jazz Age’s herald,
logs too many knights on the French Rivi-
era,
though just as straight Yank, he, as L. “Yogi” 
Berra.
(Wait, wait! We’ve swapp’d ‘F’s: for F. Scott, F. O’-
Hara!)

Wave to Rob Graves!
Robert’s writing rates raves,
of which wit most be writ on the isle of Ma-
jorca.
To hear his wives tell it. Bob’s short of ka-
vorka.
(Wait, wait! We've switch’d Graves with F. Garcia 
Lorca.)

Heil, Heinrich Heine!
(Hein’s no Freund of meine.)
“Du sagst mir Heimlich ein leises 
Wort
Ich wach auf, (ya!) und der Strauss ist 
fort.”
(Or, “Breathe in me shell-like da secretive 
woid.
I awake, but it’s gone: da chimera, she’s 
bloid.”)

Eugene Ionesco
digs scenics al fresco.
Gene’s change of address, from Slatina to 
Paris,
occasions his dramas’ deft “noms de la 
terrace.”
(“The Chairs” isn’t one, but “A Stroll in the 
Air” is.) 

Will Dublin’s James Joyce
err in finding a voice
there in Erin...? (One he’ll pot while in Rome, one in 
Brest,
although Zurich’s the spot where Jim’s tongue’s laid to 
rest.)

Hear that wretch Milan Kundera
kvetch: “Living under a
Czechoslovakian rule’s 
far from fun.”
(Milan’s migrated westward by late 
’81.)

So swore D. H. Lawrence,
so tortur’d ‘neath torrents
of World War I Britain’s belligerent 
ways:
“I’ll embark on a ‘pilgrimage savage.’” (His 
phrase.)

Mein Herr Thomas Mann,
raining cat-calls upon
Adolf Hitler and ‘dolf’s diabolical 
band,
quits the Reichstag. (Herr’s splitting for Schwyz: Switzer-
land!)

IgNobelist Naipaul,
the novelist I call
Sir Bloody V(idiadhar) S(irajpra-
sad),
call'd Tobago his home. (Or was that Trini-
dad...?)

Ovid (P. Naso),
whose odic sargasso –
Remed’ Amores, Metamorphoses, Ars Amatori-
a, Fasti
(plus “gaffes”) get Nas banish’d. (Whatever his “errors,” they’re bound to’ve
been ”Nas”ty.)

Petrarch (Petrarca)
post donning his parka,
ascends Mt. Ventoux, though the first to its summit he’s 
not,
nor is Petrarch an exile; this Itie just “iters” a 
lot.

Horacio Quiroga
hails not from Shimoga
but Salto in Uruguay (bred there 
to boot),
though it’s Buenos Aires’ans who boost his 
repute.

Salman Rushdie
eschews being shush’d. He
was born in Mumbai, better known as Bom-
bay.
Fatwas, filed, fail’d to find him, although one yet 
may.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s
best pals all will tell: “He’s
more partial to straying than staying at 
home.”
Bysshe is batty 'bout ‘bye,’ ‘ciao,’ ‘adieu’ and ‘sha-
lom.’

Thucidides!
Admitted: he’s
no wa-a-ay just your garden-variety, Athens-born mine owner, exiled 
unfairly.
Thuci’s War in the Peloponnesus remains fundamental, though read all 
too rarely.

Unamuno!
Spain’s jejune “No
Turnos” coup ships M. de U to off-beat-track Canary 
Isles.
Today, such round-trips, via France, would earn big frequent-flyer 
miles.

Monsieur Voltaire
in exile’s aware:
a star’s mononymity ramps up his 
fame:
Liberace, Cantinflas, Moliere, Tintoretto, Machito, Madon-...ah: that’s what’s in a name!

Oscar Wilde,
who pedophiled
and was judg’d to have sinn’d, was from Britain de-isled after 24 months in an old Reading 
gaol.
[Note: the sprite who once grinn’d on his tomb has been filed, losing formerly
full genetalia 
(male).]

Xenophon,
exiled upon
a damning discov’ry (he’d fought for the 
Spartans!)
starts humming: “Ennui! That’s the part that dis-
heartens.”

Yevtushenko
censures, then co-
operates with Russian politbureaucratic 
folk.
Is he in exile...? Nope, although he does reside in Tulsa, 
OK!

Stefan Zweig! A-
djourns he my ga-
zette of pan-global exilit’ra-
teurs.
You’d dis mine...? Where (for clerihew’s sake) reside 
yours...?