All the Poems
Page 21
I can hear Arthur roaming overhead
He loves to roam
Thank heavens he has plenty of space to roam in
We have seven bedrooms
And an annexe
Which leaves a flat for the chauffeur and his wife
We have much to be thankful for
The new vicar came yesterday
People say he brings a breath of fresh air
He leaves me cold
I do not think he is a gentleman
Yes, I remember Maurice very well
Fancy getting married at his age
She must be a fool
You knew May had moved?
Since Edward died she had been much alone
It was cancer
No, I know nothing of Maud
I never wish to hear her name again
In my opinion Maud
Is an evil woman
Our char has left
And a good riddance too
Wages are very high in Tonbridge
Write and tell me how you are, dear,
And the girls,
Phoebe and Rose
They must be a great comfort to you
Phoebe and Rose.
November
In the dawn of a sumptuous November
I left my house in the park
I went for a walk in the park.
The mists had been grey and ephemeral
The mists they were damp and ephemeral
As they clung to the trees in the park
And swayed o’er the grass of the park,
They swayed o’er the grass of the park.
But the sun rose up red in a sumptuous glow
And made the mists rosy where’er they did blow
And all the great park in a rosiness lay
In that sumptuous dawn of a sumptuous day.
What made all spectacular, especially spectacular
Was the black of the trees as they stood, a particular
Blackness so damp, so bare and so dark,
As they stood ’gainst the sun in the sumptuous park,
As they stood ’gainst the sun in the park.
Monsieur Pussy-Cat, blackmailer
C’est un grand Monsieur Pussy-Cat
Who lives on the mat
Devant un feu énorme
And that is why he is so fat,
En effet il sait quelque chose
Et fait chanter son hôte,
Raison de plus pourquoi
He has such a glossy coat.
Ah ha, Monsieur Pussy-Cat
Si grand et si gras,
Take care you don’t pousser trop
The one who gives you such jolis plats.
Si peu séduisante
Il était une petite fille de dix ans,
Si peu séduisante,
Qui entra dans le wagon-restaurant
Pour retrouver ses parents.
Elle portait son school uniform,
Si peu séduisante,
And a perfectly frightful little pair of shoes,
Mais ses yeux, malgré des lunettes hideuses,
Etaient si pleins de bonté et de franchise
Que tout autre aspect of this little schoolgirl,
Si peu séduisante,
Really only made one like her more.
To Carry the Child
To carry the child into adult life
Is good? I say it is not,
To carry the child into adult life
Is to be handicapped.
The child in adult life is defenceless
And if he is grown-up, knows it,
And the grown-up looks at the childish part
And despises it.
The child, too, despises the clever grown-up,
The man-of-the-world, the frozen,
For the child has the tears alive on the cheek
And the man has none of them.
As the child has colours, and the man sees no
Colours or anything,
Being easy only in things of the mind,
The child is easy in feeling.
Easy in feeling, easily excessive
And in excess powerful,
For instance, if you do not speak to the child
He will make trouble.
You would say a man had the upper hand
Of the child, if a child survive,
I say the child has fingers of strength
To strangle the man alive.
Oh it is not happy, it is never happy,
To carry the child into adulthood,
Let children lie down before full growth
And die in their infanthood
And be guilty of no one’s blood.
But oh the poor child, the poor child, what can he do,
Trapped in a grown-up carapace,
But peer outside of his prison room
With the eye of an anarchist?
Mutchmore and Not-So
The big family
In our parts
Are the Likelies
(A cousin of mine married one of them)
They have a large house called Mutchmore
Standing in well-wooded grounds,
A beautiful place, dating
In the front hall and lower part of the fire-place
From the days of Henry the Eighth.
In this house
Now alone since his wife died
And the girls married
Lives Sefton the head of the family.
We always called him Mutchmore Likely
To distinguish him from Gerald.
Gerald Likely is the son
Of old Sir Sefton’s younger brother
(Nobody thought much of him).
Gerald is not on speaking terms with his Uncle
Ever since he changed the name of his house
Such a pretty little Georgian house
Fronting on the High Street
As you come into Mutch village
Opposite the church yard
(You cannot see the church because
Of the left-hand turn to the mill house)
Changed the name of his house
From Parkins to Not-So.
Gerald has such a peculiar sense of humour;
Why should that old rascal Sefton,
He used to say,
Preen himself, the unlovable old character,
On what he fondly imagines to be
The lovable nickname of Mutchmore?
So you see, he, Gerald, thought he would
Take away from the pleasure his uncle took in his nickname,
Spite him, really, by calling his own house Not-So.
Mutchmore Likely and now Not-So Likely!
Oh course we had to laugh,
But it made the whole thing ridiculous,
Which is what Gerald wanted.
The old man may have his faults
But Gerald is really too ill-natured.
The Last Turn of the Screw
I am Miles, I did not die
I only turned, as on shut eye
To feel again the silken dress
Of my lovely governess.
Yes, it was warm, poetical and cosy,
I never saw the other fellow when
I lolled on Lady’s lap (I called her Lady)
But there were two of us all right. And both were men.
Yes, there’s the oddest part. She made me feel
A hundred years more old than I was, than she was,
She’d had a sheltered life, of course – a vicarage,
Some bustling younger children, a father pious, I’m sure he was.
But two of us? Of me? I’ll be explicit,
A soft boy, knowing rather more than boys should, lolling,
No harm in that, on Lady’s lap; the other,
Source of my knowledge, half myself by now, but calling …
Some children are born innocent, some achieve it,
You scowl; that do
esn’t fit with your philosophy?
Can you by choosing alter Nature, you inquire?
Yes, my dear sir, you can; I found it fairly easy.
But calling (to go back a step) but calling? –
That proved he was not yet quite One of Us,
The vulgar little beast, the fellow Quint.
It was at first my lordly feelings held him off
That dapper knowingness of his for instance,
The clothes right, being my uncle’s, but worn wrong,
The accent careful, well he must be careful,
I dare say he had thumbed a book about it …
To spend ten minutes with a Thing like this
Would be too long.
So snobbery made the breach, religion followed …
Ten minutes? No, Eternity, with Quint
That Quint, whose seedy sickness in my blood
I could detect (in time?) running to flood,
The sickliness of sin,
Oh yes, I saw quite plain by now
What was going in.
How did I fob him off? (now we know why)
When half my heart
Was panting for him and what he could teach
Reaching for shame, and retching too
(It was, as I have said, this squeamishness I had
First judged him bad).
Oh there was still some rotting to go on
In my own heart
Before I was quite ready to cry ‘Out!’
And see him off, though half my blood went with him.
I grow a shade dramatic here, none went at all,
My sinews have remained the same, my blood, my heart
Have not, as I’m aware, taken a taint,
I was not and I am not now a saint,
But I loved Virtue, and I love her still,
Especially as I see her in the dress
Of my sweetly fatheaded governess …
Well, let’s be plain, I fobbed Quint off
By simply failing to be clever enough.
By taking nothing in, not looking and not noticing
I made myself as dull to the persuading
Of all that shabby innuendo as
The plainest ten-year schoolboy ever was,
And so I have remained and by intent
Quite dull. And shall remain
Sooner than chance such entering again.
I did not die, but bought my innocence
At the high price of an indifference
Where once I knew the most engaging love
That first through squeamishness made virtue move,
The love, now lost of my sweet governess
Who cannot bear I should be so much less
The Miles she knew, or rather did not know.
Yes, I have lost my interestingness for Lady who,
I fear, like other innocent ladies do,
Hankered for something shady,
Well, say, dramatic, not what I am now,
An empty antic Clumsy, a mere boy.
She’ll never know
The strength I have employed and do employ
To make it sure
I shall be this
And nothing more.
I am Miles, I did not die,
I only turn, as on shut eye
To feel again the silken dress
Of my lost and lovely governess,
And sigh and think it strange
That being dull I should feel so much pain.
Company
Rise from your bed of languor
Rise from your bed of dismay
Your friends will not come tomorrow
As they did not come today
You must rely on yourself, they said,
You must rely on yourself,
Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor man
As he took it from the shelf
Crying, Oh sweet Death come to me
Come to me for company,
Sweet Death it is only you I can
Constrain for company.
Saffron
Underneath the ice
Lies the frozen spirit of Bice
Green are her eyes, green her hair,
The spirit of Bice is winter’s prisoner.
When spring comes Pale is her name, and her hair
And eyes are pale blue, and she is freer.
In summertime she is called Saffron,
Yellow are eyes and hair then. I welcome
Bice, Pale and Saffron but I love best
Beautiful summer Saffron, running fast.
Because this beautiful spirit should not be frozen
And is furthest from it when she is saffron.
Avondale
How sweet the birds of Avondale
Of Avondale, of Avondale,
How sweet the birds of Avondale
Do swoop and swing and call.
The children too of Avondale,
Of Avondale, of Avondale,
The boys and girls of Avondale
Do swoop and swing and call,
And all the little cats and dogs,
Of Avondale, of Avondale,
In their own way in Avondale
Do swoop and swing and call,
And oh it is a pleasant sight
It is a very pleasant sight
To see the creatures so delight
To swoop and swing and call,
In Avondale, in Avondale,
To see them swoop and call.
Avondall
I had a dream I was a bird
A bird of Avondall
Sitting with birds upon a roof
To swoop and swing and call
I was athirst with other birds
To swoop and swing and call
But no bird turned to me in love
All were inimical,
They were inimical.
Valuable
All these illegitimate babies …
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little cheap things,
Why do you not put some value on yourselves,
Learn to say, No?
Did nobody teach you?
Nobody teaches anybody to say No nowadays,
People should teach people to say No.
Oh poor panther,
Oh you poor black animal,
At large for a few moments in a school for young children in Paris,
Now in your cage again,
How your great eyes bulge with bewilderment,
There is something there that accuses us,
In your angry and innocent eyes,
Something that says:
I am too valuable to be kept in a cage.
Oh these illegitimate babies!
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little valuable things,
You should have said, No, I am valuable,
And again, It is because I am valuable
I say, No.
Nobody teaches anybody they are valuable nowadays.
Girls, you are valuable,
And you, Panther, you are valuable,
But the girls say: I shall be alone
If I say ‘I am valuable’ and other people do not say it of me,
I shall be alone, there is no comfort there.
No, it is not comforting but it is valuable,
And if everybody says it in the end
It will be comforting. And for the panther too,
If everybody says he is valuable
It will be comforting for him.
I Wish
Oh I wish that there were some wing, some wing,
Under which I could hide my head,
A soft grey wing, a beautiful thing,
Oh I wish that there were such a wing,
And then I should suddenly be quite sure
As I never was before,
And fly far away, and be gay instead
Of being hesitating and filled with dread,
Oh I wish I could find a wi
ng.
But today as I walk on the pavement I see
Where a car is parked, where a car is parked,
In the wheel’s bright chromium hub I see
A world stretching out that is like but unlike
The world that encloses me.
And I wish to pass through the shining hub
And go far away, far away,
As far as I might on the wings of the dove
That first I thought would succour me
And carry me far away,
Oh the hub is my love far more than the dove
That first I thought would succour me.
And now the shining beautiful hub
Opens its door to me,
I enter, I enter, through the hub I have entered
The world that shines so bright,
The road stretches there in ochre; and blue
Is the sky I am walking into; and white
Is the beach I perceive of a heavenly sea
A-roll in the realms of light,
It rolls in the realms of light.
The Listener
Listening one day on the radio
To ‘An Encounter with mosquitoes in New Guinea’ by Miss Cheeseman,
I fell to thinking of the animal kingdom
And experienced at once a relief of nervous tension.
For I thought, Their battles are as ours, as ours,
They are no different from our own,
Then rose up a Spirit from the ether that touched my eyelids
And cast me in a deep swoon.
Hymn to the Seal
to the tune ‘Soldiers of Christ arise!’
(Hymns Ancient and Modern)
Creature of God, thy coat
That lies all black and fine
I do admire, as on a sunny
Rock to see thee climb.
When thou wast young thy coat
Was pale with spots upon it,
But now in single black it lies
And thou, Seal, liest on it.
What bliss abounds to view
God’s creatures in their prime
Climb in full coat upon a rock
To breathe and to recline.
Fish Fish
Look, man, look,
Underneath the brook
Sits the fish fish
On a hook.
What, man, what?
Let him off?
No fear fear
I’m going to look.
Yes, now I think I will go down to him,
To have a look at him,
In the depths
Of the perishable brook.
So go now man, pray go,
No more say
Loose the fish fish from the hook
To swim away.
Underneath the brook dim
Sits the fish,
He sits on the hook
It is not in him.
He is waiting for me
To carry me to the sea
I shall be happy then
In the watery company of his kingdom.
Goodbye, man dear,
Goodbye quickly,
I go to the fish fish
Impatiently.
Venus When Young Choosing Death