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