by Stevie Smith
Heavy the taste of sugar on my tongue
Heavy the days, will they never pass?
Heavy my sleep, will it come at last?
It is winter now: the wind howls
The snowy fox and the snowy owls
Hunt in the night. I stay within.
Outside my house I hear the storms begin.
Which winds did I like best?
Why, the East and the West,
They brought me tranquillity
The others, anxiety.
Northumberland House
I was always a thoughtful youngster,
Said the lady on the omnibus,
I remember Father used to say:
You are more thoughtful than us.
I was sensitive too, the least thing
Upset me so much,
I used to cry if a fly
Stuck in the hatch.
Mother always said:
Elsie is too good,
There’ll never be another like Elsie,
Touch wood.
I liked to be alone
Sitting on the garden path,
My brother said he’d never seen a
Picture more like Faith in the Arena.
They were kindly people, my people,
I could not help being different,
And I think it was good for me
Mixing in a different element.
The poor lady now burst out crying
And I saw her friend was not a friend but a nurse
For she said, Cheer up duckie the next stop is ours,
They got off at Northumberland House.
This great House of the Percys
Is now a lunatic asylum,
But over the gate there still stands
The great Northumberland Lion.
This family animal’s tail
Is peculiar in that is it absolutely straight,
And straight as a bar it stood out to drop after them
As they went through the gate.
The Crown of Gold
an English Writer in Search of an Established English Publisher
Mother procure for me a golden crown
Said the child, That the fire may not burn me nor the seas drown.
She took the child and ran for three years in the wilderness with him.
And beside them ran a German-Jewish man
And he loved the child and protected him,
Crying: Remember Jerusalem.
And he crowned the child with a crown of affection.
But the child said
Mother, it is not a crown of affection I want
It is a crown of gold.
And the child and his mother ran more quickly in the wilderness
And more quickly beside them ran the German-Jewish man
Crying: Remember Jerusalem.
And he said, Nobody has loved your child as I have loved him.
And the child said, Mother procure for me a crown of gold
You are not required to think about anything else.
And the German-Jewish man kissed the crowned child’s hand as he ran
Crying: Remember Jerusalem.
And the child stood in the path
And he took from his head the crown of affection
And threw it at the feet of the German-Jewish man
Crying: Remember Jerusalem.
And they left the German-Jewish man and left the wilderness
And she procured for her child a crown of gold
And they sat in a pleasant garden in a fine city.
And the child said, Mother, gold is the right material for a crown
Is it only in the wilderness that crowns of affection are worn,
And she said, Not it is not and began to weep and wring her hands,
Do not be foolish Mother, he said, I am no longer young.
And she said, Remember Jerusalem.
And the wind blew strong and rattled the leaves of the poplar trees
And the child did not hear, or heard and laughed, he did not care
But the strong wind took the words and carried them to the wilderness
Where they fell to the ground in a dry place.
And the mother of the child stopped crying and was resigned to the golden crown
And she said, Now may the fire not burn my child nor the seas drown.
Why do I …
Why do I think of Death as a friend?
It is because he is a scatterer
He scatters the human frame
The nerviness and the great pain
Throws it on the fresh fresh air
And now it is nowhere
Only sweet Death does this
Sweet Death, kind Death,
Of all the gods you are best.
Some Are Born
Some are born to peace and joy
And some are born to sorrow
But only for a day as we
Shall not be here tomorrow.
‘My beauty was unnoticed.’
‘It was I!’
SCORPION AND OTHER POEMS (1972)
Scorpion
‘This night shall thy soul be required of thee’
My soul is never required of me
It always has to be somebody else of course
Will my soul be required of me tonight perhaps?
(I often wonder what it will be like
To have one’s soul required of one
But all I can think of is the Out-Patients’ Department –
‘Are you Mrs Briggs, dear?’
No, I am Scorpion.)
I should like my soul to be required of me, so as
To waft over grass till it comes to the blue sea
I am very fond of grass, I always have been, but there must
Be no cow, person or house to be seen.
Sea and grass must be quite empty
Other souls can find somewhere else.
O Lord God please come
And require the soul of thy Scorpion
Scorpion so wishes to be gone.
Seymour and Chantelle
or
Un peu de vice
in memory of A. Swinburne and Mary Gordon
Pull my arm back, Seymour,
Like the boys do,
Oh Seymour, the pain, the pain,
Still more then, do.
I am thy schoolboy friend, now I
Am not Chantelle any more but mi.
Say ‘sweet mi’, ‘my sweet mi.’ Oh the pain, the pain,
Kiss me and I will kiss you again.
Tell me, Seymour, when they … when …
Does it hurt as much as this
And this and this? Ah what pain,
When I do so I feel
How very painful it is for you,
No I will, so, again and again,
Now stuff the dockleaves in your mouth
And bite the pain.
Seymour, when you hold me so tight it hurts
I feel my ribs break and the blood spurt,
Oh what heaven, what bliss,
Will you kiss me, if I give you this
Kiss, and this and this? Like this?
Seymour, this morning Nanny swished me so hard
(Because I told her she had the face
Of an antediluvian animal that had
Become extinct because of being so wet)
She broke her hair-brush. What bliss.
No, don’t stop me now with a kiss, oh God it was painFul,
I could not stop crying.
Oh darling, what heaven, how did you think
Of doing that? You are my sweetest angel of a
Little cousin, and your tears
Are as nice as the sea, as icy and salt as it is.
How do you see?
How do you see the Holy Spirit of God?
I see him as the holy spirit of good,
But I do not think we should talk about spirits, I think
We should call good,
good.
But it is a beautiful idea, is it not?
And productive of good?
Yes, that is the problem, it is productive of good,
As Christianity now is productive of good,
So that a person who does not believe the Christian faith
Feels he must keep silent in case good suffers,
In case what good there is in the world diminishes.
But must we allow good to be hitched to a lie,
A beautiful cruel lie, a beautiful fairy story,
A beautiful idea, made up in a loving moment?
Yes, it is a beautiful idea, one of the most
Beautiful ideas Christianity has ever had,
This idea of the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost,
My heart goes out to this beautiful Holy Ghost,
He is so beautifully inhuman, he is like the fresh air.
They represent him as a bird, I dislike that,
A bird is parochial to our world, rooted as we are
In pain and cruelty. Better the fresh air.
But before we take a Christian idea to alter it
We should look what the idea is, we should read in their books
Of holy instruction what the Christians say. What do they say
Of the beautiful Holy Ghost? They say
That the beautiful Holy Ghost brooded on chaos
And chaos gave birth to form. As this we cannot know
It can only be beautiful if told as a fairy story,
Told as a fact it is harmful, for it is not a fact.
But it is a beautiful fairy story. I feel so much
The pleasure of the bird on the dark and powerful waters,
And here I like to think of him as a bird, I like to feel
The masterful bird’s great pleasure in his breast
Touching the water. Like! Like! What else do they say?
Oh I know we must put away the beautiful fairy stories
And learn to be good in a dull way without enchantment,
Yes, we must. What else do they say? They say
That the beautiful Holy Spirit burning intensely,
Alright as never was anything in this world alight,
Inspired the scriptures. But they are wrong,
Often the scriptures are wrong. For I see the Pope
Has forbidden the verse in Mark ever to be discussed again
And I see a doctor of Catholic divinity saying
That some verses in the New Testament are pious forgeries
Interpolated by eager clerks avid for good.
Ah good, what is good, is it good
To leave in scripture the spurious verses and not print
A footnote to say they are spurious, an erratum slip?
And the penal sentences of Christ: He that believeth
And is baptized shall be saved, he that believeth not
Shall be damned. Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire
Preparing for the devil and his angels. And then
Saddest of all the words in the scripture, the words,
They went away into everlasting punishment. Is this good?
Yes, nowadays certainly it is very necessary before we take
The ideas of Christianity, the words of our Lord,
To make them good, when often they are not very good,
To see what the ideas are and the words; to look at them.
Does the beautiful Holy Ghost endorse the doctrine of eternal hell?
Love cruelty, enjoin the sweet comforts of religion?
Oh yes, Christianity, yes, he must do this
For he is your God, and in your books
You say he informs, gives form, gives life, instructs.
Instructs, that is the bitterest part. For what does he instruct
As to the dreadful bargain, that God would take and offer
The death of his Son to buy our faults away,
The faults of the faulty creatures of the Trinity?
Oh Christianity, instructed by the Holy Ghost,
What do you mean? As to Christ, what do you mean?
It was a child of Europe who cried this cry,
Oh Holy Ghost what do you mean as to Christ?
I heard him cry. Ah me, the poor child,
Tearing away his heart to be good
Without enchantment. I heard him cry:
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
Perfect 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 it or not.
Oh what do you mean, what do you mean?
You never answer our difficulties.
You say, Christianity, you say
That the 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.
So I heard the child of Europe cry,
Tearing his heart away
To be good without enchantment,
Going away bleeding.
Oh how sad it is to give up the Holy Ghost
He is so beautiful, but not when you look close,
And the consolations of religion are so beautiful,
But not when you look close.
Is it beautiful, for instance, is it productive of good
That the Roman Catholic hierarchy should be endlessly discussing at this moment
Their shifty theology of birth control, the Vatican
Claiming the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? No it is not good,
Or productive of good. It is productive of
Contempt and disgust. Yet
On the whole I suppose Christianity is kinder than it was,
Helped to it, I fear, by the power of the Civil Arm.
Oh Christianity, Christianity,
That has grown kinder now, as in the political world
The colonial system grows kinder before it vanishes, are you vanishing?
Is it not time for you to vanish?
I do not think we will be able to bear much longer the dishonesty
Of clinging for comfort to beliefs we do not believe in,
For comfort, and to be comfortably free of the fear
Of diminishing good, as if truth were a convenience.
I think if we do not learn quickly, and learn to teach children,
To be good without enchantment, without the help
Of beautiful painted fairy stories
pretending to be true,
Then I think it will be too much for us, the dishonesty,
And, armed as we are now, we shall kill everybody
It will be too much for us, we shall kill everybody.
The Ass
In the wood of Wallow
Mash, walked Eugenia, a callow
girl, they said she was,
An Ass.
Beyond the wood there lay a soppy mórass
But the path across was firm, was
Not a-wash.
Three years in the wood Eugenia stayed
By briar and bramble and lost ways she was delayed,
And in a witch’s house within a thicket of yew trees
Was put to work, but seemed so happy that the witch
Finding no pleasure in her tyranny
Gave her release.
She is an ass, she cried, let her pass.
And perish in the soppy mórass.
Eugenia was as happy in the change
To be free to roam and range
As she had been happy and not sad or sorry
At her labours in the witch’s bothy.
The sun fell hot upon the causeway
That was not very wide
And the mórass sopped and shuffled
Either side.
And the little beetles ran
About, and all the gnats and the mosquitoes sang
And the mórass was as sweet a green
As Eugenia had ever seen.
She sang: Baa-baa-ba-bay
And seven happy years spent on the way.
Once there came a fiend
Who tempted her to go upon the green
Mórass: Come, ass, and go
Upon the green. But she said, No.
She was not such an ass to try the green,
It would deliver her below.
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho
Never was such a happy idle ass
Since idleness ran glad in Paradise
As Eugenia was.
Paradise. Paradise.
Now the seven years have passed,
The causeway’s ended, the soppy mórass
Has sucked its last; the ass
Comes to a sandy pass
Between low sandhills that are tufted over with esparto grass.
Beyond, the great seas splash
And roll in pleasure to be so a-wash,
Their white crests coming at a dash
To fetch the ass.
Oh my poor ass
To run so quickly as if coming home
To where the great waves crash.
Now she is gone. I thought
Into her tomb.
Yet often as I walk that sandy shore
And think the seas
Have long since combed her out that lies
Beneath, I hear the sweet ass singing still with joy as if
She had won some great prize, as if
All her best wish had come to pass.
A Soldier Dear to Us
It was the War
I was a child