by Stevie Smith
Is fat,
He goes by the lift –
They all do that.
This lift, large as a room,
(Yet the beasts bunch),
Goes up with a groan,
They have not oiled the winch.
Not yet to the lift
Goes the Best Beast,
He has to walk on the floor to make a show
First.
Great are his horns,
Long his fur,
The Beast came from the North
To walk here.
Is he not fat?
Is he not fit?
Now in a crown he walks
To the lift.
When he lay in his pen,
In the close heat,
His head lolled, his eyes
Were not shut for sleep.
Slam the lift door,
Push it up with a groan,
Will they kill the Beast now?
Where has he gone?
When he lay in the straw
His heart beat so fast
His sides heaved, I touched his side
As I walked past.
I touched his side,
I touched the root of his horns;
The breath of the Beast
Came in low moans.
Exeat
I remember the Roman Emperor, one of the cruellest of them,
Who used to visit for pleasure his poor prisoners cramped in dungeons,
So then they would beg him for death, and then he would say:
Oh no, oh no, we are not yet friends enough.
He meant they were not yet friends enough for him to give them death.
So I fancy my Muse says, when I wish to die:
Oh no, Oh no, we are not yet friends enough,
And Virtue also says:
We are not yet friends enough.
How can poet commit suicide
When he is still not listening properly to his Muse,
Or a lover of Virtue when
He is always putting her off until tomorrow?
Yet a time may come when a poet or any person
Having a long life behind him, pleasure and sorrow,
But feeble now and expensive to his country
And on the point of no longer being able to make a decision
May fancy Life comes to him with love and says:
We are friends enough now for me to give you death;
Then he may commit suicide, then
He may go.
Easy
Easy in their ugly skins
Claudius and Gertrude were,
They liked as well as loving each other,
They were a humdrum pair.
Of all the people in that bloodstained play
They are the only ones
Who might have been living today.
Hamlet dimly perceived
They were not entirely of his times.
Their witless freedom of the ages
Irked him sometimes.
He, a man of two times –
His Yesterday, his Today –
Could not stretch
To their timelessness,
He was too much on edge.
Banausic, he called them, banausic,
A villainous banausic couple.
He turned to blow on his love for his father
And found it rubble.
Mouthing at Yesterday’s ghostly manifestation
A sentence or two from Wittenberg, likely at least
To put a ghost in its place,
He discovered no satisfaction,
And no sense.
Sadly his heart heaved. Where was there a shield for him
Against banausic couples in their ugly skin
Easy, easy? There was never any ease for him.
Oh Christianity, Christianity
Oh Christianity, Christianity,
Why do you not answer our difficulties?
If He was God He was not like us,
He could not lose.
Can Perfection be less than perfection?
Can the creator of the Devil be bested by him?
What can the temptation to possess the earth have meant to Him
Who made and possessed it? What do you mean?
And Sin, how could He take our sins upon Him? What does it mean?
To take sin upon one is not the same
As to have sin inside one and feel guilty.
It is horrible to feel guilty,
We feel guilty because we are.
Was He horrible? Did He feel guilty?
You say He was born humble – but He was not,
He was born God –
Taking our nature upon Him. But then you say,
He was Perfect Man. Do you mean
Perfectly Man, meaning wholly; or Man without sin? Ah
Perfect Man without sin is not what we are.
Do you mean He did not know that He was God,
Did not know He was the Second Person of the Trinity?
(Oh, if He knew this, and was,
It was a source of strength for Him we do not have)
But this theology of ‘emptying’ you preach sometimes –
That He emptied Himself of knowing He was God – seems
A theology of false appearances
To mock your facts, as He was God, whether He knew He was or not.
Oh what do you mean, what do you mean?
You never answer our difficulties.
You say, Christianity, you say
That Trinity is unchanging from eternity
But then you say
At the incarnation He took
Our Manhood into the Godhead,
That did not have it before,
So it must have altered it,
Having it.
Oh what do you mean, what do you mean?
You never answer our questions.
Why do you rage?
Why do you rage so much against Christ, against Him
Before Whom angel brightness grows dark, heaven dim?
Is He not wonderful, beautiful? Is He not Love?
Did He not come to call you from Heaven above?
Say, Yes; yes, He did; say, Yes; call Him this:
Truth, Beauty, Love, Wonder, Holiness.
Say, Yes. Do not always say, No.
Oh I would if I thought it were so,
OhI know that you think it is so.
The True Tyrant
or
The Spirit of Duty Rebuked
Oh my darling Goosey-Gander
Why do you always wish to wander
Evermore, evermore?
Now I have you safe at home
I will never let you roam
Ever more.
Then cried the lady from her kitchen
Standing in her chains of grass:
It is not Duty, it is Love
That will not let me pass
Evermore, evermore
Through the grass-enchainèd door, the grassy door.
Under Wrong Trees …
or
Freeing the Colonial Peoples
Under wrong trees
Walked the zombies
They were told to walk under oaks, you know,
But they preferred willows.
It was the first time they had been old
Enough not to do as they were told
They thus became
Not zombies
But splendide
Until one day they fell in
The river the willows were weeping in
Which was stupide
Of them, people said, and showed they were not old
Enough yet not to do as they were told.
But really I think this tale of wrong trees
Shows that they never were zombies
But men, women and men.
So why should we notice them?
I had a dream …
I had a dream I was Helen of Troy<
br />
In looks, age and circumstances,
But otherwise I was myself.
It was the ninth year of the siege
And I did not love anybody very much
Except perhaps Cassandra,
It was those peculiar eyes she had
As if she were short-sighted
That made me feel I could talk to her,
I would have loved anybody I could talk to.
I suppose you know how it’s going to end, I said,
As well as I do? Dreams, dreams? They aren’t dreams
You know. Do you know?
I used to walk on the walls
And look towards the Grecian tents …
It’s odd, I said (to Cassandra, of course) how
Everything one has ever read about Troy
As they have always been such splendid writers who were writing
Naturally gets into one’s conversation …
Where Cressid lay that night, except they did not say
How beastly Scamander looks under this sort of sky,
And the black Greek ships piled up on the seashore beyond
Like prison hulks, like slugs. So there we were
On the walls of Troy. But what I did not know,
And I could not get Cassandra to say either,
Was which of the Helen legends I was,
The phantom, with the real Helen in Egypt,
Or the flesh-and-blood one here
That Menelaus would take back to Sparta.
Remembering this, that there was still some uncertainty,
Raised my spirits, I must say
Dispiritedness was what we were all sunk in,
And though the Royal Family may have seemed spectral
Their dispiritedness was substantial enough, and I dare say
The Greeks were in much the same case, dispirited;
Well, nine years that had been of it, and now
The heavy weather, and the smells
From the battlefield, when the wind was in that direction,
And the spirit of the men, too, on both sides,
This was substantial enough; it seemed to me
Like the spirit of all armies, on all plains, in all wars, the men
No longer thinking why they were there
Or caring, but going on; like the song the English used to sing
In the first world war: We’re here because, we’re here because,
We’re here because, we’re here. This was the only time
I heard Cassandra laugh, when I sung this to her. I said:
There you are, you laugh; that shows you are not nearly so
Religious as you think. That’s blasphemous, that laugh,
Sets you free. But then she got frightened. All right, I said,
Don’t be free, go along and finish up on Clytemnestra’s sword-point,
Pinked like a good girl. I used to get so cross.
Paris was stupid, it was impossible to talk to him.
Hector might have been different, at least he understood enough
To be offended – fear of the gods again, I suppose – because
When I said: Well, you know what the Trojan Women
Are going to say about the sack of Troy and being led away
Into captivity, they are going to say: If these things
Had not happened to us we should not be remembered. I hope that
Will be a comfort to you. He was angry and said
I should bring ill luck to Troy by my impiety, so I laughed
But I felt more like crying. I went into our palace then
And into my own room. But the heaviness of the sky
Still oppressed me, and the sad colours of rust and blood
I saw everywhere, as Cassandra saw too. Oh, I thought,
It is an ominous eternal moment I am captive in, it is always
This heavy weather, these colours, and the smell of the dead men.
It is curious to be caught in a moment of pause like this,
As a river pauses before it plunges in a great waterfall.
I was at home with these people at least in this, that we wished
It was over and done with. But oh, Cassandra, I said, catching hold of her,
For she was running away, I shall never make
That mischievous laughing Helen, who goes home with Menelaus
And over her needlework, in the quiet palace, laughs,
Telling her story, and cries: Oh shameful me. I am only at home
In this moment of pause, where feelings, colours and spirits are substantial,
But people are ghosts. When the pause finishes
I shall wake.
Dear Child of God
Dear child of God
With the tears on your face
And your hands clasped in anger
What is the matter with your race?
In the beginning, Father,
You made the terms of our survival
That we should use our intelligence
To kill every rival.
The poison of this ferocity
Runs in our nature,
And O lord thou knowest
How it nourishes thy creatures.
Oh what a lively poison it was
To bring us to full growth,
Is then becoming loving
As much as our life is worth?
It is a price I would pay
To grow loving and kind,
The price of my life
And the life of human kind.
Father in heaven
Dear Father of peacefulness
Is it not often we remember
You put this poison in us,
Generally we stand
With the tears on our face
And our hands clasped in anger,
Faithful but unfortunate.
The Wedding Photograph
Goodbye Harry I must have you by me for a time
But once in the jungle you must go off to a higher clime
The old lion on his slow toe
Will eat you up, that is the way you will go.
Oh how I shall like to be along on the jungle path
But you are all right now for the photograph
So smile Harry smile and I will smile too
Thinking what is going to happen to you,
It is the death wish lights my beautiful eyes
But people think you are lucky to go off with such a pretty prize.
Ah feeble me that only wished alone to roam
Yet dares not without marrying leave home
Ah woe, burn fire, burn in eyes’ sheathing
Fan bright fear, fan fire in Harry’s breathing.
Phèdre
I wonder why Proust should have thought
The lines from Racine’s Phèdre
Depuis que sur ces bords les dieux ont envoyé
La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé to be
Entirely devoid of meaning,
To me they seem
As lucid as they are alarming.
I wonder why
The actresses I have seen
Playing Phèdre
Always indulge
In such mature agonizing.
Phèdre was young,
(This is as clear in Racine as Euripides)
She was young,
A girl caught in a trap, a girl
Under the enforcement
Of a goddess.
I dare say Phèdre
In fact I’m sure of it
Was by nature
As prim as Hippolytus,
Poor girl, poor girl, what could she do
But be ashamed and hang herself,
Poor girl.
How awful the French actress
Marie Bell
Made her appear.
Poor Phèdre,
Not only to be shamed by her own behaviour,
Enforced by that disgusting goddess,
Ancient enemy
>
Of her family,
But nowadays to have to be played
By an actress like Marie Bell
In awful ancient agonizing, something painful.
Now if I
Had been writing this story
I should have arranged for Theseus
To die,
(Well, he was old)
And then I should have let
Phèdre and Hippolytus
Find Aricie out
In some small meanness,
Say
Eating up somebody else’s chocolates,
Half a pound of them, soft centred.
Secretly in bed at night, alone,
One after another,
Positively wolfing them down.
This would have put Hip. off,
And Phædra would be there too
And he would turn and see
That she was pretty disgusted, too,
So then they would have got married
And everything would have been respectable,
And the wretched Venus could have lumped it,
Lumped, I mean, Phèdre
Being the only respectable member
Of her awful family,
And being happy.
I should have liked one member
Of that awful family
To be happy,
What with Ariadne auf Naxos,
And Pasiphaé and that awful animal,
And Minos sitting judging the Dead
In those awful dark halls.
Yes, I should like poor simple honourable sweet prim Phèdre
To be happy. One would have to be pretty simple
To be happy with a prig like Hippolytus,
But she was simple.
I think it might have been a go,
If I were writing the story
I should have made it a go.
Everything is Swimming
Everything is swimming in a wonderful wisdom
She said everything was swimming in a wonderful wisdom
Silly ass
What a silly woman
Perhaps she is drunk
No I think it is mescalin
Silly woman
What a silly woman
Yes perhaps it is mescalin
It must be something
Her father, they say …
And that funny man William …
Silly ass
What a silly woman
Elle continua de rire comme une hyène.
‘The Persian’
The gas fire
Seemed quite a friend
Such a funny little humming noise it made
And it had a name, too, carved on it you know,
‘The Persian’. The Persian!
Ha ha ha; ha ha.
Now Agnes, pull yourself together.
You and your friends.
Emily writes such a good letter
Mabel was married last week
So now only Tom left
The doctor didn’t like Arthur’s cough
I have been in bed since Easter
A touch of the old trouble
I am downstairs today
As I write this