All the Poems

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All the Poems Page 9

by Stevie Smith


  Or upon any field of experience where pain makes patterns the poet slanders.

  Upon a Grave

  to the tune ‘Upon a bank in the greenwood as I lay’

  Upon a grave

  In the churchyard as I lay,

  An angel out of heaven

  Came to me and he did say:

  Your child is dead,

  He singeth far away,

  In Death is sorrow shed,

  In Death is sorrow shed.

  I raised my head

  And mournfully I cried:

  My son is dead

  I was with him when he died.

  He lies alone,

  And worms his flesh divide.

  In life is sorrow known,

  In life is sorrow known.

  Bye Baby Bother

  Bye Baby Bother

  Where is your brother?

  They so-and-so and so-and-so

  And twisted his guts

  In a nasty way

  Because he said they were nuts.

  Bye Baby Bother

  How shall I keep them from your pother?

  I will be quiet now, Mother, but when there is a general mobilization

  Dozens of chaps like me will know what to do with our ammunition.

  Dozens by hundreds will be taken and torn,

  Oh would the day had died first when you were born.

  The Photograph

  They photographed me young upon a tiger skin

  And now I do not care at all for kith and kin,

  For oh the tiger nature works within.

  Parents of England, not in smug

  Fashion fancy set on a rug

  Of animal fur the darling you would hug,

  For lately born is not too young

  To scent the savage he sits upon,

  And tiger-possessed abandon all things human.

  ‘… and the clouds return after the rain’

  to the tune ‘Worthy the Lamb’

  In a shower of tears I sped my fears

  And lost my heavy pain,

  But now my grief that knew relief

  Is sultried o’er again.

  Of leaf and flower of that first shower

  No memories remain.

  The clouds hang down in heavy frown

  But still it does not rain.

  Happy the man of simple span

  Whose cry waits on his pain,

  But there are some whose mouths are dumb

  When the clouds return again.

  Out of Time

  It is a formal and deserted garden

  With many a flower bed and winding path.

  A cupid stands and draws a bow at venture

  Upon a marble bath.

  All round his feet the eager ivy grows,

  Stretches upon the stone, above the ground,

  And in the ivy flowers the busy bee

  Makes a melodious sound.

  The air is ponderous with summer scents

  And still it lies upon the garden all

  As still and secret as it stayed upon

  A funeral.

  The sun shines brightly in the upper air

  And casts his beams upon the garden grass.

  There spilled they lie a carpet of dull gold

  Where shadows pass.

  The garden gives to these primaeval beams

  That strew its floor a plastered yellow tone

  As of too mellow sunshine that brings on

  A thunder stone.

  It is an ominous enchanted garden

  That can transmogrify the healthful rays,

  Can hold and make them an essential part

  Of unquiet days.

  Ah me, the unquiet days they tread me down,

  The hours and minutes beat upon my head.

  I have spent here the time of three men’s lives]

  And am not dead.

  And even as I count the days that pass

  I lose the total and begin again.

  It is an evil garden out of Time

  A place of pain.

  ‘I’ll have your heart’

  I’ll have your heart. If not by gift, my knife

  Shall carve it out; I’ll have your heart, your life.

  Flow, Flow, Flow

  Flow, flow, flow,

  Deep river running

  To the sea.

  Go, go, go,

  Let all thy waters go

  Over my head,

  And when my bones are dead

  Long may they lie

  Upon the ocean bed,

  Thy destiny.

  The Children of the Cross

  Oh cold and ferocious are the children of the cross,

  They have captured us and bound us and their gain is our loss.

  But straining to death

  In the stench of the fire’s breath

  We leave lonely for ever the children of the cross.

  Fallen, Fallen

  The angel that rebellion raised

  In moment of ecstatic rage

  Is fallen, is fallen; his power is gauged.

  Noted, by rote is had, the word is spoken.

  Nothing remains but a falling star for a token,

  A tale told by the fireside, a sword that is broken.

  Rothebât

  Rothebât, Rothebât, the days that are gone

  Have taken my heart with them, I am twisted and torn.

  But no longer I linger, and no longer I long,

  If Rothebât will put a finger on the pang of my wrong.

  Rothebât, Rothebât, the winds blew back the name that she cried,

  Rothebât, Rothebât, and cast it to the ocean wide.

  Look, Look

  He flies so high

  Upon the sky

  Like winged piggywig

  Above his sty.

  The sky is

  Too high for you. Is

  Not the world

  A good sty for you?

  Tableau de l’Inconstance des Mauvais Anges

  Brightest and best are the sons of the morning,

  They wait on our footsteps and show us no ill.

  But waking or sleeping

  We are in their keeping

  And sooner and later they will do as they will.

  Will Ever?

  Will ever the stormy seas and the surges deep,

  Swinging from left to right over the world,

  Stay in their idiot pacing, silently sleep

  In a memorial silence of precreation?

  Alas for the crafty hand and the cunning brain

  That took from silence and sleep the form of the world,

  That bound eternity in a measuring chain

  Of hours reduplicate and sequential days.

  Would that the hours of time as a word unsaid

  Turning had turned again to the hourless night,

  Would that the seas lay heavy upon the dead,

  The lightless dead in a grave of a world new drowned.

  Ceux qui luttent …

  Ceux qui luttent ce sont ceux qui vivent.

  And down here they luttent a very great deal indeed.

  But if life be the desideratum, why grieve, ils vivent.

  Suicide’s Epitaph

  Oh Lord have mercy on my soul

  As I had none upon my body.

  And you who stand and read this rhyme

  How do you do, Tomnoddy?

  Sois punie par où tu as tant péché, dit-il,

  en me regardent d’une

  manière froide et enigmatique.

  Come

  Venez vite

  Avec moi

  To the street

  Of the cow.

  Little Boy Sick

  I am not God’s little lamb

  I am God’s sick tiger.

  And I prowl about at night

  And what most I love I bite,

  And upon the jungle grass I slink,

  Snuff the aroma of my mental stink,

&nb
sp; Taste the salt tang of tears upon the brink

  Of my uncomfortable muzzle.

  My tail my beautiful, my lovely tail,

  Is warped.

  My stripes are matted and my coat once sleek

  Hangs rough and undistinguished on my bones.

  O God I was so beautiful when I was well.

  My heart, my lungs, my sinews and my reins

  Consumed a solitary ecstasy,

  And light and pride informed each artery.

  Then I a temple, now a charnel house.

  Then I a high hozannah, now a dirge.

  Then I a recompense of God’s endeavour,

  Now a reproach and earnest of lost toil.

  Consider, Lord, a tiger’s melancholy

  And heed a minished tiger’s muted moan,

  For thou art sleek and shining bright

  And I am weary.

  Thy countenance is full of light

  And mine is dreary.

  The Violent Hand

  Angel most cynical

  Cold and inimical

  With a smile of brass

  On your cruel face

  I think you will irritate me.

  So much that you will make me

  Risk at a touch

  All that is at stake for me.

  If I clutch

  With violent hand the rosary

  You dangle out of reach for me

  I shall find out what it must be

  Taken not given freely, injury.

  Fuite d’Enfance

  I have two loves,

  There are two loves of mine,

  One is my father

  And one my Divine.

  My father stands on my right hand,

  He has an abstracted look.

  Over my left shoulder

  My Divine reads me like a book.

  Which shall I follow …

  And following die?

  No longer count on me

  But to say goodbye.

  A leur insu

  Je suis venue

  Faire mes adieux

  Adieu, adieu, adieu.

  MOTHER, WHAT IS MAN? (1942)

  Human Affection

  Mother, I love you so.

  Said the child, I love you more than I know.

  She laid her head on her mother’s arm,

  And the love between them kept them warm.

  A King in Funeral Procession

  He blinks he sighs

  He is alive, they cry.

  Give us the body

  Let us see him breathe

  Show us the heartbeat

  And the dedicated sleeve.

  He looks ill

  They are satisfied he is looking that way

  It is no more than he should

  He looks ill

  O.K.

  De profundis

  The solemn music the tune

  Clamavi

  I have cried unto thee on the loud bassoon

  Clamavi a toto corde meo Domine

  From the desert the stones

  From the rift of this affectionate people

  From my bones.

  Lift the baby

  Let her see him

  Lift up the baby

  Give her a lift up then.

  Oh Lord I am not high minded

  I have no proud looks

  Not one proud look they have left me

  I am their picture book.

  La Gretchen de Nos Jours (2)

  O Queen of Heaven,

  Have pity on me,

  My heart is bared

  For you to see.

  Forgive, forgive

  The heart that lies

  In anguish bared

  Before your eyes.

  Mother of God

  Behold my heart,

  Its sin and stain,

  Its bitter smart;

  In pity turn

  Your pitying gaze

  Upon my heart,

  And its hopes raze.

  Quite to the ground,

  For there are yet

  Some hopes that are

  Too highly set.

  O lop each hope

  And lay it low,

  And quench the fire

  Of my heart’s glow.

  For still I hope

  He may return,

  And while I hope,

  Still must I burn

  All with desire

  That waits on hope

  As doth the hangman

  On the rope.

  Hope and desire,

  All unfulfilled,

  Have more than rope

  And hangman killed.

  Murder

  Farewell for ever, well for ever fare,

  The soul whose body lies beneath this stone!

  ’Tis easy said by one who had a care

  Soul should doff flesh. That has another tone?

  My hand brought Reggie Smith to this strait bed –

  Well, fare his soul well, fear not I the dead.

  Girls!

  Girls! although I am a woman

  I always try to appear human

  Unlike Miss So-and-So whose greatest pride

  Is to remain always in the VI Form and not let down the side

  Do not sell the pass dear, don’t let down the side

  This is what this woman said and a lot of balsy stuff beside

  (Oh the awful balsy nonsense that this woman cried.)

  Girls! I will let down the side if I get the chance

  And I will sell the pass for a couple of pence.

  Where are you going?

  Oh where are ye going ye human faces,

  Where are ye going, to what far places,

  Where are ye going, to what distances?

  The boat takes the boatman,

  The deep-sea fisher

  Has taken away

  The old world preacher,

  This tedious old person who asked such questions

  As drove everybody to exasperation.

  No wonder they all of them cried, Good riddance!

  Autumn

  He told his life story to Mrs Courtly

  Who was a widow. ‘Let us get married shortly,’

  He said. ‘I am no longer passionate,

  But we can have some conversation before it is too late.’

  Poet!

  Poet, thou art dead and damned,

  That speaks upon no moral text.

  I bury one that babbled but; –

  Thou art the next. Thou art the next.

  Bog-Face

  Dear little Bog-Face,

  Why are you so cold?

  And why do you lie with your eyes shut? –

  You are not very old.

  I am a Child of this World,

  And a Child of Grace,

  And Mother, I shall be glad when it is over,

  I am Bog-Face.

  The Zoo

  The lion sits within his cage,

  Weeping tears of ruby rage,

  He licks his snout, the tears fall down

  And water dusty London town.

  He does not like you, little boy,

  It’s no use making up to him,

  He does not like you any more

  Than he likes Nurse, or Baby Jim.

  Nor would you do if you were he,

  And he were you, for don’t you see

  God gave him lovely teeth and claws

  So that he might eat little boys.

  So that he might

  In anger slay

  The little lambs

  That skip and play

  Pounce down upon their placid dams

  And make dams flesh to pad his hams.

  So that he might

  Appal the night

  With crunching bones

  And awful groans

  Of antelope and buffalo,

  And the unwary hunter whose ‘Hallo’

  Tells us his life is over here below.

  There’s
none to help him, fear inspired,

  Who shouts because his gun misfired.

  All this the lion sees, and pants

  Because he knows the hot sun slants

  Between the rancid jungle-grass,

  Which never more shall part to let him pass

  Down to the jungle drinking-hole,

  Wither the zebra comes with her sleek foal.

  The sun is hot by day and has his swink,

  And sops up sleepy lions’ and tigers’ stink,

  But not this lion’s stink, poor carnivore,

  He’s on the shady shelf for ever more.

  His claws are blunt, his teeth fall out,

  No victim’s flesh consoles his snout,

  And that is why his eyes are red

  Considering his talents are misusèd.

  Advice to Young Children

  ‘Children who paddle where the ocean bed shelves steeply

  Must take great care they do not,

  Paddle too deeply.’

  Thus spake the awful aging couple

  Whose heart the years had turned to rubble.

  But the little children, to save any bother,

  Let it in at one ear and out at the other.

  The Face

  There is a face I know too well,

  A face I dread to see,

  So vain it is, so eloquent

  Of all futility.

  It is a human face that hides

  A monkey soul within,

  That bangs about, that beats a gong,

  That makes a horrid din.

  Sometimes the monkey soul will sprawl

  Athwart the human eyes,

  And peering forth, will flesh its pads,

  And utter social lies.

  So wretched is this face, so vain,

  So empty and forlorn,

  You may well say that better far

  This face had not been born.

  If I lie down

  If I lie down upon my bed I must be here,

  But if I lie down in my grave I may be elsewhere.

  The Sad Mother

  Darling little baby child,

  You lie upon my breast so mild,

  Later you must learn to creep,

  But now you are entirely free to wake or sleep.

  Ah, will the Saviour …?

  The cross begot me on the stone,

  My heart emits no further moan,

  But fortified by funeral thought

  Awaits the doom of the distraught.

  Ah! will the Saviour never come

  To unlock me from the tomb,

  To requite the tears that falter

  For a birth I could not alter?

  Conviction (I)

  Christ died for God and me

  Upon the crucifixion tree

  For God a spoken Word

  For me a Sword

  For God a hymn of praise

  For me eternal days

  For God an explanation

  For me salvation.

  Conviction (II)

  I walked abroad in Easter Park,

  I heard the wild dog’s distant bark,

  I knew my Lord was risen again, –

  Wild dog, wild dog, you bark in vain.

  Conviction (III)

  The shadow was so black

  I thought it was a cat,

  But once in to it

 

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