by Stevie Smith
They came from the trenches
To our suburb mild.
Our suburb then was more a country place
They came to our house for release.
In the convalescent Army hospital
That was once a great house and landed estate
Lay Basil, wounded on the Somme,
But his pain was not now so great
That he could not be fetched in a bath-chair
Or hobble on crutches to find in our house there
My mother and aunt, his friends on leave, myself (I was twelve)
And a hearth rug to lie down in front of the fire on and rest himself.
It was a November golden and wet
As there had been little wind that year and the leaves were yet
Yellow on the great trees, on the oak trees and elms
Of our beautiful suburb, as it was then.
When Basil woke up he liked to talk and laugh
He was a sweet-tempered
laughing man, he said:
‘My dear, listen to this’ then he read
From The Church Times, how angry the Bishop was because
Of the Reserved Sacrament in the church
Of St Alban’s, Holborn. ‘Now, my dear’ he said, ‘for a treat
Next Sunday I will take you to All Saints, Margaret Street; only
You will have to sit on the ladies’ side, though you are not yet one really.’
Basil never spoke of the trenches, but I
Saw them always, saw the mud, heard the guns, saw the duckboards,
Saw the men and the horses slipping in the great mud, saw
The rain falling and never stop, saw the gaunt
Trees and the rusty frame
Of the abandoned gun carriages. Because it was the same
As the poem ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’
I was reading at school.
Basil and Tommy and Joey Porteous who came to our house
Were too brave even to ask themselves if there was any hope
So I laughed as they laughed, as they laughed when Basil said:
What will Ronny do now (it was Ronny Knox) will he pope?
And later, when he had poped, Tommy gave me his book for a present,
‘The Spiritual Aeneid’ and I read of the great torment
Ronny had to decide, Which way, this or that?
But I thought Basil and Tommy and Joey Porteous were more brave than that.
Coming to our house
Were the brave ones. And I could not look at them,
For my strong feelings, except
Slantingly, from the hearth rug, look at them.
Oh Basil, Basil, you had such a merry heart
But you taught me a secret you did not perhaps mean to impart,
That one must speak lightly, and use fair names like the ladies
They used to call
The Eumenides.
Oh Basil
I was a child at school,
My school lessons coloured
My thoughts of you.
Envoi
Tommy and Joey Porteous were killed in France. Now fifty years later
Basil has died of the shots he got in the shell crater
The shrapnel has worked round at last to his merry heart, I write this
For a memorial of the soldier dear to us he was.
The Forlorn Sea
Our Princess married
A fairy King,
It was a sensational
Wedding.
Now they live in a palace
Of porphyry,
Far, far away,
By the fòrlorn sea.
Sometimes people visit them,
Last week they invited me
That is how I can tell you
They live by a fòrlorn sea.
(They said: Here’s a magic carpet,
Come on this,
And when you arrive
We will give you a big kiss.)
I play in the palace garden,
I climb the sycamore tree,
Sometimes I swim
In the fòrlorn sea.
The King and the Princess were shadowy,
Yet beautiful,
They are waited on by white cats,
Who are dutiful.
It is like a dream
When they kiss and cuddle me,
But I like it, I like it,
I do not wish to break free.
So I eat all they give me
Because I have read
If you eat fairy food
You will never wake up in your own bed.
But will go on living,
As has happened to me,
Far, far away
By a fòrlorn sea.
Angel Boley
There was a wicked woman called Malady Festing
Who lived with her son-in-law, Hark Boley,
And her daughter Angel,
In a house on the high moorlands
Of the West Riding of Yorkshire
In the middle of the last century.
One day Angel
Overheard her mother, Malady, talking to Hark, her husband.
Hark, said Malady, it is time
To take another couple of children
Into our kitchen.
Hark laughed, for he too was wicked and he knew
For what purpose the little children
Were required.
But Angel, who was not happy and so
Lived out her life in a dream of absentmindedness,
In order not to be too much aware
Of her horrible relatives, and what it was
That happened every now and then
In the kitchen; and why the children who came
Were never seen again, this time
When she heard what her husband and mother said,
Came out of her absentmindedness and paid attention.
I know now, she said, and all the time I have known
What I did not want to know, that they kill all children
They lure to this house; and that is why, when I pass in the village,
The people look askance at me, and they whisper –
But not so that I cannot hear –
There goes the daughter of Mother Lure. And the stranger says:
Who is Mother Lure? And they answer: Mrs Festing and they make the sign
That is to protect them from evil. Selfish wretches, said Angel,
They do not mind about the children, that evil is not kept from them.
Angel wandered into the woods and she said: No more children
Are going to be murdered, and before they are murdered, tormented
And corrupted; no more children are going to be the victims
Of Mother Lure and my husband, Hark. Dark was the look then
On Angel’s face, and she said: I am the Angel of Death.
Mrs Festing and Boley
Always left the cooking to Angel, they despised Angel but Angel
Could cook, and that they thought was all she was fit for,
To cook and keep house. And they realized
It was far from being to their disadvantage that Angel was,
As they thought, half-witted, and never knew
Or wanted to know, what was going on around her.
As soon as Angel
Said to herself: I am the Angel of Death
She became at once very practical and went out into the woods and fields
And gathered some A. Phalloides, commonly called the ‘white’ or deadly
Amanita, a mushroom of high toxicity. These poisonous fungi
She put into a soup, and this soup she gave
To Hark, and her mother, Malady, for supper, so that they died.
Angel then went to the police and said:
I have done evil, but I have saved many children.
The Judge said: Why did you not tell the police
That children we
re being destroyed? There was no proof, said Angel,
Because there were no bodies. I never could find out
What they did with the children after they had killed them.
So then the police searched hard, the wells, the rivers and the woodlands,
But never could find out where
The children lay. Nor had the parents of the children
At any time done anything but weep. For they thought their children
Had been bewitched and done away with, and that
If they told their fears of Mother Lure and her wickedness
To the police, they would not believe them, and more children than ever
Would disappear.
From then onwards in the trial, Angel spoke
No words more, except to say: I am the Angel of Death.
So they put her in a lunatic asylum, and soon she died
Of an outbreak of typhoid fever. The people of the village
Now loved Angel, because she had delivered them from the fear
Of Mother Lure and Hark Boley, and had saved their
Little children from being tormented and slain by these wicked people.
So they wrote on her tombstone: ‘She did evil that good
Might come’. But the Vicar said it was better not to put this but
Just her name and age, which was sixteen.
So he had the words
The villagers had written taken off the tombstone. But the next day
The words were again on the tombstone; so again the Vicar had them
Removed. And this time a watch was set on the grave,
A police constable and the village sexton watched there that night.
And no man came again to write on the tombstone
The forbidden words. Yet when morning came,
Again the words were on the tombstone.
So the Vicar said: It is the hand of the Lord.
And now in that graveyard, at that grave’s head beneath the yew trees,
Still stands today the tombstone of Angel, with the words writ on it:
‘She did evil that good might come’. May God be merciful.
The Donkey
It was such a pretty little donkey
It had such pretty ears
And it used to gallop round the field so briskly
Though well down in years.
It was a retired donkey,
After a lifetime of working
Between the shafts of regular employment
It was now free to go merrymaking.
Oh in its eyes was such a gleam
As is usually associated with youth
But it was not a youthful gleam really,
But full of mature truth.
And of the hilarity that goes with age,
As if to tell us sardonically
No hedged track lay before this donkey longer
But the sweet prairies of anarchy.
But the sweet prairies of anarchy
And the thought that keeps my heart up
That at last, in Death’s odder anarchy,
Our patterns will be broken all up.
Though precious we are momentarily, donkey,
I aspire to be broken up.
Cock-A-Doo
I love to hear the cock crow in
The middle of the day
It is an eerie sound in
The middle of the day
Sometimes it is a very hot day
Heavy for coming thunder
And the grass I tread on is dusty
And burnt yellow. Away
Over the river Bean which naturally
(It having been hot now for so long)
Runs shallow, stand up
The great yellow cornfields, but
Walking closely by the farm track
Not lifting my head, but foot by
Foot slowly, tired after a long
Walk, I see only the blue
And gray of the flint path, and
Each one of the particles of
Yellow dust on it. And this
Seeing, because of tiredness, becomes
A transfixion of seeing, more sharp
Than mirages are. Now comes the cry
Of the cock at midday
An eerie sound – cock-a-doooo – it
Sharpens a second time
The transfixion. If there were
A third sharpener
Coming this hot day with a butcher’s edge
It would spell death.
Francesca in Winter
O love sweet love
I feel this love
It burns me so
It comes not from above
It burns me so
The flames run close
Can you not see
How the flames toss
Our souls like paper
On the air?
Our souls are white
As ashes are
O love sweet love
Will our love burn
Love till our love
To ashes turn?
I wish hellfire
Played fire’s part
And burnt to end
Flesh soul and heart
Then we could sit beside our fire
With quiet love
Not fear to look in flames and see
A shadow move.
Ah me, only
In heaven’s permission
Are creatures quiet
In their condition.
So to fatness come
Poor human race that must
Feed on pain, or choose another dish
And hunger worse.
There is also a cup of pain, for
You all to drink all up, or,
Setting it aside for sweeter drink,
Thirst evermore.
I am thy friend. I wish
You to sup full of the dish
I give you and the drink,
And so to fatness come more than you think
In health of opened heart, and know peace.
Grief spake these words to me in a dream. I thought
He spoke no more than grace allowed
And no less than truth.
The Sallow Bird
A sallow bird sat on a tree
Yclad in black from head to hee’
And oh he wept sae piteously.
Why sitst thou there and a’ so blackit?
Why sitst thou there in thy black jacket,
With feathers furled?
Ah me, ah me,
Come now, tell me.
Then spake the bird in accents sar’
‘Something human’s dearer far
To me than wealth of a’ the world,
And I lack it, and I lack it, I lack it.’
He never seyd a word again
(Nor went away). Yet oft in pain
He’ll hauk that crik as if he spak it:
‘I lack it, I lack it, I lack it.’
When Walking
A talented old gentleman painting a hedge
Came suddenly upon my mind’s eye when walking;
Forgive me for my sins
And bring me to everlasting life to be with thee in happiness for ever,
I wanted to say. But I could not.
My heart leaps, I said. I am filled with joy
For your hedge. Nodding, he vanishèd.
Her-zie
a troll and his wife speak of the human child they stole
What’s wrong with you-zie?
Nothing with me-zie,
Then what with who-zie?
Only with Her-zie,
So what with Her-zie?
A hearse for her-zie
A hearse for her-zie
Came for her.
What colour was it then?
Golden, golden,
Was there anyone in it?
A pale king was in it.
That was not a hearse for Her-zie, husband,
It was he
r marriage carriage.
It was a hearse for me, then,
My heart went with them and died then.
Husband, ah me-zie,
Your heart has died for Her-zie,
Without it you cannot be easy.
The Word
My heart leaps up with streams of joy,
My lips tell of drouth;
Why should my heart be full of joy
And not my mouth?
I fear the Word, to speak or write it down,
I fear all that is brought to birth and born;
This fear has turned my joy into a frown.
Nor We of Her to Him
He said no word of her to us
Nor we of her to him,
But oh it saddened us to see
How wan he grew and thin.
We said: She eats him day and night
And draws the blood from him,
We did not know but said we thought
This was why he grew thin.
One day we called and rang the bell,
No answer came within,
We said: She must have took him off
To the forest old and grim,
It has fell out, we said, that she
Eats him in forest grim,
And how can we help him being eaten
Up in forests grim?
It is a restless time we spend,
We have no help for him,
We walk about and go to bed,
It is no help to him.
Sometimes we shake our heads and say
It might have better been
If he had spoke to us of her
Or we of her to him.
Which makes us feel helpful, until
The silence comes again.
Mrs Blow and Her Animals
There was a dog called Clanworthy
Who lives with his friend the cat Hopdance
In the house of Mrs Blow, a widow,
Upon a glade in Cluny.
Hey, Hopdance,
How is Mrs Blow?
So-so, said Hopdance,
Bow, said the dog.
Mrs Blow
Loved her animals very much
She often said:
I do not know what I should do
Without Hopdance and
Clanworthy.
They loved her too.
Hey, Hopdance,
How is Mrs Blow?
So-so, said Hopdance,
She is not very well, said the dog.
Hopdance fetched her a fish
Which she cooked by the fire.
That will do her good,
Said Hopdance; but, said the dog,
She must have wine as well as food.
Clanworthy, brave Clanworthy,
Clanworthy for aye
Through fire and water brought wine
That Mrs Blow might not die.
Mrs Blow has now become their only thought
And care,
All the other animals
In the forest of Cluny
Say there is no talking to them now
Because their only thought is Mrs Blow.
Hey Hopdance,
How is Mrs Blow?