All the Poems

by Stevie Smith

Our Bog is Dood

  Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,

  They lisped in accents mild,

  But when I asked them to explain

  They grew a little wild.

  How do you know your Bog is dood

  My darling little child?

  We know because we wish it so

  That is enough, they cried,

  And straight within each infant eye

  Stood up the flame of pride,

  And if you do not think it so

  You shall be crucified.

  Then tell me, darling little ones,

  What’s dood, suppose Bog is?

  Just what we think, the answer came,

  Just what we think it is.

  They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours

  And we are wholly his.

  But when they raised them up again

  They had forgotten me

  Each once upon each other glared

  In pride and misery

  For what was dood, and what their Bog

  They never could agree.

  Oh sweet it was to leave them then,

  And sweeter not to see,

  And sweetest of all to walk alone

  Beside the encroaching sea,

  The sea that soon should drown them all,

  That never yet drowned me.

  Wretched Woman

  Wretched woman that thou art

  How thou piercest to my heart

  With thy misery and graft

  And thy lack of household craft.

  Lightly Bound

  You beastly child, I wish you had miscarried,

  You beastly husband, I wish I had never married.

  You hear the north wind riding fast past the window? He calls me.

  Do you suppose I shall stay when I can go so easily?

  Le Revenant

  My Uncle from the realms of Death

  Returned to draw an earthly breath

  And as he walked upon the heath

  The wild wind whistled through his teeth.

  He came unto a habitation

  That was the centre of the nation

  He knocked upon each house and said:

  It is much better to be dead.

  And when they stoned him from the door

  He vowed he would come back no more.

  Friskers

  or

  Gods and Men

  Oh what can be happening pray what are they at?

  Oh why am I slowly turning into a cat?

  Is it Zeus responsible, tired of my love

  Does he send me outside with the puss cats to rove?

  Or indifferent rather, quite sick of it all,

  Is he simply letting Hera have her way with a rival?

  Oh look at my beautiful coat and my handsome whiskers,

  I shall be most loved of all the young cats and I shall be called Friskers.

  Cool and Plain

  Cool and plain

  Cool and plain

  Was the message of love on the window pane.

  Soft and quiet

  Soft and quiet

  It vanished away in the fogs of night.

  To School!

  Let all the little poets be gathered together in classes

  And let prizes be given to them by the Prize Asses

  And let them be sure to call all the little poets young

  And worse follow what’s bad begun

  But do not expect the Muse to attend this school

  Why look already how far off she has flown, she is no fool.

  To an American Publisher

  You say I must write another book? But I’ve just written this one.

  You liked it so much that’s the reason? Read it again then.

  The Rehearsal

  I always admire a beautiful woman

  And I’ve bought you some flowers for your beautiful bosom.

  Death-bed of a Financier

  Deal not with me God as I have dealt with Man

  In the prosperity which thou hast given me

  Helpless in his need a careless course I ran

  And now oh Lord that thou hast driven me

  To my last gasp, I pray for all I am not worth

  Deal not with me as I have dealt on earth.

  The Hat

  I love my beautiful hat more than anything

  And through my beautiful hat I see a wedding ring

  The King will marry me and make me his own before all

  And when I am married I shall wear my hat and walk on the palace wall.

  Thank You

  We have no father and no mother

  We are often taken for one another

  What are we looking for over the wall?

  We are not looking for anything at all.

  The Ride

  Riding slowly along the banks of a canal

  Where the dredges had been at work and the slime lay piled,

  I rode in Egypt slowly, slowly with Captain Fairchild,

  Under a black sun, on an oppressive afternoon.

  Pricking our dull horses to an even pace

  We rode beside the black slide, mile upon mile,

  Between the slime mounds, beside the black deep water.

  Suddenly the captain turning smiled into my face,

  Smiling with a black smile, pale beneath his burnt skin,

  Smiling he said, if the Sultana of Istanbuol

  Had in her Household a Grand Vizier so old

  That he was alive in the Napoleonic Wars,

  What is it, he said, she would most wish him to forget?

  My hand for a moment lay slack upon the rein,

  And my horse checking stood still with lowered head,

  Oh, I said carelessly, the slime and the black slime,

  The slime and the length and the slime

  Of the ramshackle Ottoman Empire.

  Well my dear chap, said the Captain smiling,

  It always comes to that, but we know do we not,

  That the slime and the black slime is something we can parry

  With a Byronic connotation and a note in time.

  I Am

  Far from normal far from normal far from normal I am

  He sighed as he stood on the river bank and watched where the fishes swam

  But ever the wind in the willow trees whispered, I am: I am.

  He saw the variety of nature

  The ant the mole and the sky

  And resignedly hurried upon his way

  Crying: I, I; I, I;

  Then a priest came and told him if he was good

  And thought as he ought and did as he should

  He should be saved by the Lamb’s fresh blood.

  Oh I know, I know the poor man cries,

  I know the worth of the heavenly prize

  And I know the strength of the race to be run

  But my black heart cleaves to the strength of my gun.

  Then he put his gun to his head and shot

  Crying absurdly, I am not.

  The Crown of Bays

  They gave him a crown of bays and dressed him up,

  But he was listless though famous, he had had enough.

  He looked at the audience, they are clapping knaves,

  And turning to the Winged Form, Who are you? he says.

  ‘I am the Angel of the Considered Bays.’

  When you go back I will follow you, he said.

  ‘To do that, you must be dead.’

  I ask it; this people is a basket.

  He laid his head in the angel’s lap,

  Oh let me come with you, let me come.

  ‘Can you say farewell to the people in deep slumbers

  Who travel by the Underground railway with happy faces in numbers?’

  These, and these

  He said (thinking of the sleepers and the audience) tease,

  Let me come with you.

  ‘Only those who expect everything are prepared to take nothing,’

&nb
sp; Said the angel slyly, as posing a conundrum,

  ‘Death may be that.’

  Still lead; I follow, pat pat.

  ‘Can you say farewell to the Natural Beauties?’

  Yes, I look at them through a glass cage, the glaze sullies.

  The angel waves a hand and under a tree,

  A mighty chestnut whose fine branches

  The spring with white flowers enhances,

  Lay the bay-crowned Misery.

  Oh Angel of Bays, he cries, weeping bitterly,

  You have forged a dagger with your visions for my penalty,

  Crack my heart, pierce throat, I will come with you,

  I only used to think it was worth while living for the view.

  How beautiful the sky is that is bright blue

  Through the green leaves, and the sun warms through and through

  Before a man hangs they give him what he likes to eat,

  So you have given me what I like to see, the trees and no street,

  Now to the scaffold, Angel, do your part,

  I will come with you. (The angel stabs him to the heart.)

  As he lay bleeding his last into the untrod earth

  He smiled a happy smile and said:

  I had a philosophy of use and wont, it was bad;

  I conceded that life was a balance with

  Only three ha’pence to the liver’s credit.

  But to live with three ha’pence was a merit.

  I held that nothing to have not wholly bad not wholly good

  Was a young man’s dream and juvenile aspiration,

  Now I am come to the young man’s situation,

  And expecting everything gladly receive annihilation.

  ‘You receive what I do not know,’

  Said the angel, and with this word

  Flies away and leaves him lying upon the sward.

  But over his shoulder airborne came these last words, ‘Briefly

  In my opinion for what it is worth, you die trivially.’

  Homage to John Cowper Powys

  This old man is sly and wise,

  He knows the truth, he tells no lies,

  He is as deep as a British pool.

  And Monsieur Poop may think him a fool.

  Little Child of Brightest Face

  Little Child of brightest face

  Do you do you know your place?

  Underneath the table pray

  Where the little fishes play.

  Our Office Cat

  Our Office cat is a happy cat

  She has had two hundred kittens

  And every one has been adopted into happy homes

  By our cat-loving Britons.

  A Jew is Angry with his Friend who does not Believe in Circumcision

  Oh ho uncircumciséd Sadducee I see

  In all created time not one as thee

  Befoul the cradle whence he came

  Take a great name and make it a great shame

  Take it and make it on the lips of the heathen a gibe

  Not the name of a sect, not Sadducee, Pharisee or Scribe

  But Jew Jew Jew

  Should have taught you all that we knew

  With a racial knowledge in the Pentateuchal days of old

  Before the time had come for Sadducees to be so very bold

  As to be so bold as to be too modern for circumcision

  Oh mockery of Greek and Roman, oh derision

  Of the derided

  Now I have you, manikin, depend

  I’ll dock you of your foreskin and something else that will end

  All hope of posterity, no little Sadducees will you beget

  When I’ve finished with you, but sit in a eunochy fret

  Waiting for death to relieve you of a hated life

  You look a little pale? What ho, a knife, a knife.

  From the Coptic

  Three angels came to the red red clay

  Where in a heap it formless lay,

  Stand up, stand up, thou lazy red clay,

  Stand up and be Man this happy day.

  Oh in its bones the red clay groaned,

  And why should I do such a thing? it said,

  And take such a thing on my downy head?

  Then the first angel stood forth and said,

  Thou shalt have happiness, thou shalt have pain,

  And each shall fall turn and about again,

  And no man shall say when the day shall fall

  That thou shalt be happy or not at all.

  And the second angel said much the same

  While the red clay lay flat in the falling rain,

  Crying, I will stay clay and take no blame.

  Then the third angel rose up and said,

  Listen thou clay, raise thy downy head,

  When thou hast heard what I have to say

  Thou shalt rise Man and go man’s way.

  What have you to promise? the red clay moans,

  What have you in store for my future bones?

  I am Death, said the angel, and death is the end,

  I am Man, cries clay rising, and you are my friend.

  A Humane Materialist at the Burning of a Heretic

  When shall that fuel fed fire grown fatter

  Burn to consumption and a pitter patter

  Of soft ash falling in a formless scatter

  Telling Mind’s death in a dump of Matter.

  In Protocreation

  In protocreation

  Is my imagination

  And in my world’s first emergence from gaseous fire

  My desire.

  Then heaved the earth

  In a first vegetable birth

  Later according to the record

  Experimental animals walked abroad.

  The awkward pterodactyl

  The brontosaurus

  The mammoth and the early lizard

  Were before us.

  Oh had it but stopped then

  Oh had there not come men.

  Earth fired

  And the seas smoked

  Heavy heavy swung the swamp

  Crust broke and the mountains poked.

  Oh had it but stopped then

  Oh had there not come men.

  In that high and early time

  There was no good deed and no crime

  No oppression by informed mind

  No knowledge and no human kind.

  Do Not!

  Do not despair of man, and do not scold him,

  Who are you that should so lightly hold him?

  Are you not also a man, and in your heart

  Are there not warlike thoughts and fear and smart?

  Are you not also afraid and in fear cruel,

  Do you not think of yourself as usual,

  Faint for ambition, desire to be loved,

  Prick at a virtuous thought by beauty moved?

  You love your wife, you hold your children dear,

  Then say not that Man is vile, but say they are.

  But they are not. So is your judgement shown

  Presumptuous, false, quite vain, merely your own

  Sadness for failed ambition set outside,

  Made a philosophy of, prinked, beautified

  In noble dress and into the world sent out

  To run with the ill it most pretends to rout.

  Oh know your own heart, that heart’s not wholly evil,

  And from the particular judge the general,

  If judge you must, but with compassion to see life,

  Or else, of yourself despairing, in death flee strife.

  The Death Sentence

  Cold as No Plea,

  Yet wild with all negation,

  Weeping I come,

  To my heart’s destination,

  To my last bed

  Between th’unhallowed boards –

  The Law allows it

  And the Court awards.

  The Commuted Sentence

  Shut me not alive away

&nbs
p; From the light of every day

  Hang me rather by the neck to die

  Against a morning sky.

  Oh shut me not behind a prison wall

  I have a horror of this sort of place

  Where I may sit and count the hours pass

  And never see a smiling human face.

  Here is all straight and narrow as a tomb

  Oh shut me not within a little room.

  The Celtic Fringe

  Kathleen ni Houlihan

  Walking down the boule-igan

  Ran into a hooligan

  Ah ha, Kathleen ni Houlihan.

  She went with the rat-ican

  And very soon they had a brat-ican

  Ah ha, Kathleen ni Houlihan

  How goes it now?

  They called him Rebel-can

  Oh he was a devil-can

  Kathleen ni Houlihan

  Your son.

  And the big black cat-ican

  That sat on the mat-ican

  With a pit and a pati-can

  Spit. Spat.

  Was the chief sport

  Oh the Houlihan sort

  And chiefly did Rebel-can

  Twitch his tail, the devil-can.

  All up the boule-igan

  Runs Kathleen ni Houlihan

  For flirting his tail the cat is gone,

  They are alone.

  And that is how the Houlihan

  Fell out in the boule-igan

  Whose tail shall they twitch now?

  Eh, Kathleen, the cat is gone.

  The Leader

  Men fear the hollow man at the top of the tree

  He is supported they say by a phoney majority

  But the squirrel brings nuts and the mole brings meal

  And the cock brings the spur from the tip of his heel

  And they none of them dare say what they feel

  For he kills as he wills does that horrible He

  Who sits at the top of the old oak tree.

  Oh foolish they are who keep his rules

  And bring him food, they are surely fools

  When it is plain as a pikestaff bold

  They should run him out in the cold, cold, cold

  Or burn him up in the hot fury

  Of a flame that will lick to the top of a tree.

  Oh if only they had some sense

  The squirrel might store for her own expense

  The cock at his heel find a use for the spur

  And the mole with the meal sleek the young mole’s fur.

  But they will not do it, they are so frightened

  Of what they have raised and the tree has heightened

  Then come along with a sigh and a leap

  For this people runs mad in the Fuehrer Prinzip.

  Yes they will have a lord and it matters not who

  Be he hollow as a drum he will do, do, do.

  Oh, If Only …

  The intellectual Englishman shrank away from the bedside.

  There in the bed lay the Englishwoman Blah in the arms of Captain Thomas.

  Oh, the ineffable smug look of Blah (thought the young intellectual)