by Stevie Smith
Called Hippy-Mo
But he did not wish to stay
With me, he wished to go.
Hippy-Mo,
Hippy-Mo.
I hugged him tight, I said:
You shall not go,
You shall stay here with me
Hippy-Mo.
Then he grew tall as a house,
Hippy-Mo,
Took me in his claws and would
Not let me go,
Hippy-Mo.
His eyes were black as the night
Through which we flew,
And the lightnings flashed from his eyes
As we flew through,
Hippy-Mo what are
You going to do
With me?
Hippy-Mo, Hippy-Mo,
Brought me to a sunny land.
Put me in a cage
Wherein I rage
And when I rage he holds
My hand
So tight I cannot move
From him.
Hippy-Mo
Let me go,
Do you wish me
To die?
He was so mean he did not condescend
To reply. Even
Yes or no.
Hendecasyllables
It is the very bewitching hour of eight
Which is the moment when my new day begins,
I love to hear the pretty clock striking eight
I love to get up out of my bed quickly.
Why is this? Because morning air is so cold?
Or because of new strength that seems to come then?
Both. And also because waking up ends dreams.
Black March
I have a friend
At the end
Of the world.
His name is a breath
Of fresh air.
He is dressed in
Grey chiffon. At least
I think it is chiffon.
It has a
Peculiar look, like smoke.
It wraps him round
It blows out of place
It conceals him
I have not seen his face.
But I have seen his eyes, they are
As pretty and bright
As raindrops on black twigs
In March, and heard him say:
I am a breath
Of fresh air for you, a change
By and by.
Black March I call him
Because of his eyes
Being like March raindrops
On black twigs.
(Such a pretty time when the sky
Behind black twigs can be seen
Stretched out in one
Uninterrupted
Cambridge blue as cold as snow.)
But this friend
Whatever new names I give him
Is an old friend. He says:
Whatever names you give me
I am
A breath of fresh air,
A change for you.
Grave by a Holm-Oak
You lie there, Anna,
In your grave now,
Under a snow-sky,
You lie there now.
Where have the dead gone?
Where do they live now?
Not in the grave, they say,
Then where now?
Tell me, tell me,
Is it where I may go?
Ask not, cries the holm-oak,
Weep, says snow.
The Sea-widow
How fares it with you, Mrs Cooper my bride?
Long are the years since you lay by my side.
Do you wish I was back? Do you speak of me dearest?
I wish you were back for me to hold nearest.
Who then lies nearer, Mrs Cooper my bride?
A black man comes in with the evening tide.
What is his name? Tell me! How does he dare?
He comes uninvited. His name is Despair.
The Stroke
for M.
I was a beautiful plant
I stood in the garden supreme
Till there came a blight that fell on each leaf
How I wish this had not been
Oh I wish this had not been.
I can feel the sun, and my blighted leaves
In an elderly way grow glad
But oh in my depths I bleed, I bleed,
From a heart that is youthful and sad
From a heart that is piercèd and sad.
Come, Death (2)
I feel ill. What can the matter be?
I’d ask God to have pity on me,
But I turn to the one I know, and say:
Come, Death, and carry me away.
Ah me, sweet Death, you are the only god
Who comes as a servant when he is called, you know,
Listen then to this sound I make, it is sharp,
Come Death. Do not be slow.
APPENDIX I – UNCOLLECTED POEMS
‘Casmilus’
Casmilus, whose great name I steal,
Whose name a greater doth conceal,
Indulgence, pray,
And, if I may,
The winged tuft from either heel.
‘As falls the gravelled grouse’
As falls the gravelled grouse
From clear sky,
Or as the clear eyed hawk,
Sighting through skyey spaces,
Some lesser creature, formed and nurtured
By the dear gods for his peculiar pleasure,
Down plunges through the empyrean blue
And takes what is his own,
What rightly,
Time, place, circumstance harmonious,
Does, with the ageing of a weary world,
Escheat to him.
Henry Wilberforce
Henry Wilberforce as a child
Was much addicted to the pleasures of the wild;
He observed Nature, saw, remembered,
And was by a natural lion dismembered.
From the Latin
Be mine, sweet child, let not the blush departing
From thy soft cheek declare it was in vain
The signal flashed, the message to engage departing
Ah, not in vain, dear girl; ah, not in vain.
Portrait of a Fool
Is she not a stupid girl? Just see,
With heaving beating heart she stands
And likes to be in bed at love and twists her hands,
And never laughs at all but only censures or approves
In pompous hesitating sixth form syllables.
Yes, she’s rather like a prefect,
In an adult I always think a de-fect:
She has a pompous hesitating soul,
Well, there’s the portrait of a fool.
Souvenir de Jacky Vandenbroeck
Very louche is this dog, very louche
And that is why he is looking this way;
For the dog that is louche by the night-time
Can never be smiling by day
Oh, he prefers to be louche by the night-time
To smiling and nodding by day.
‘The grief of an unquiet mind is a thing accursed’
The grief of an unquiet mind is a thing accursed,
It layeth a violent hand upon the flesh;
But the soul is its enemy and the flesh is torn
That the soul may be taken and driven untimely forth.
Unhappy the soul that is linked with an unquiet mind,
The fight may be long or short but the end is one,
And the mark of the fight is set on the brow of the flesh
That men may see and be warned and hurry away.
Marriage I Think
Marriage I Think
For women
Is the best of opiates.
It kills the thoughts
That think about the thoughts,
It is the best of opiates.
So said Maria.
But too long in soli
tude she’d dwelt,
And too long her thoughts had felt
Their strength. So when the man drew near,
Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.
Poor Maria!
Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,
For now she’s alone again and all in pain;
She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stay
To trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day.
Lulu
I do not care for Nature,
She does not care for me;
You can be alone with a person,
You can’t be alone with a tree.
Death of Cold
Often in her bath, ah cold,
A thought would come to give her pause;
And she would stand and only stare
Upon a sudden cause.
And this matured her mind so that the gravestone bold
Declared she died too young to be so old.
Via Media Via Dolorosa
There’s so much to be said on either side,
I’ll be dumb.
There’s so much to be said on either side,
I’ll hold my tongue.
For years and years I never said a word,
Now I have lost the art: my voice is never heard,
For my apprehension
Snaps beneath the tension
Of what is to be said on either side.
Sigh No More
Sigh no more ladies nor gentleman at all,
Whatever fate attend or woe befall;
Sigh no more, shed no bitter tear,
Another hundred years you won’t be here.
Salon d’Automne
One thousand and one naked ladies
With a naïveté
At once pedantic and sympathetic
Deck the walls
Of the Salon d’Automne.
This is the Slap school of art,
It would be nice
To smack them
Slap, slap, slap,
That would be nice.
It is possible
One might tire of smacking them
In time
But not so soon
As once tires of seeing them.
We too
Have our pedantic and unsympathetic
School,
It used to show
A feeling for animals.
The English are splendid with animals,
There was The Stag at Bay
And Faithful unto Death,
And Man’s Best Friend the horse this time
Usually under gunfire,
The English are splendid with animals.
That older school
Was perhaps
Of an intellectual level
With the Salon d’Automne.
Nowadays, of course,
We are more advanced:
The bad modern painter
Has lost the naïveté
Of that earlier school
And in its place
Has developed a talent
For making the work of his betters
Seem stale
By unspirited
Imitation.
Really
This is more tiring
Than the thousand and one
Naked ladies.
Sterilization
Carve delinquency away,
Said the great Professor Clay.
A surgical operation is just the thing
To make everybody as happy as a king.
But the great Dostoievsky the Epileptic
Turned on his side and looked rather sceptic.
And the homosexual Mr Wilde
Sat in the sunshine and smiled and smiled.
And a similarly inclined older ghost in a ruff
Stopped reading his sonnets aloud and said ‘Stuff!’
And the certainly eccentric Swift, Crashawe and Donne,
Silently shook hands and thanked God they had gone.
But the egregious Professor Clay
Called on Theopompous and won the day.
And soon all our minds will be flat as a pancake,
With no room for genius, exaltation or heartache.
And our children and theirs will preen, smirk and chatter,
With not even the sense to ask what is the matter.
The Word
Oh where is the word
Said sweet Sally Soo
Oh! where is the word I seek
It cannot be true
There is no word from you
To put in my velvet cheek
But the echoes ran
And the silence came
And alone in the cold
She is much the same
Oh! where is the word oh! where is it pray
Don’t keep me waiting all night and day.
Landrecie
What shall I say to the gentlemen, mother,
They stand in the doorway to hear what is said,
Waiting and watching and listening and laughing,
Is there no word that will send them away?
What shall I say to the gentlemen, mother,
What shall I say to them, must I say nothing?
If I say nothing, then will they not harm us,
Will they not harm us and shall we not suffer?
What shall I say to the gentlemen, mother?
See, they are waiting, and will not depart.
Closed are your eyelids, your lips closed in silence
Cannot instruct me, oh what shall I answer?
This Baronet
This Baronet is very funny
And I do so hope he makes some money
He deserves to for not being a pompous ass
Like the Bishop of Bye and Mrs Grampus.
Swift to Depart
Swift
to depart
As falling leaves in autumn
is your
Love.
The Horror of the Midnight
Little children in the sunlight
Please be happy while you may
For the horror of the midnight
It shall never pass away
Not though darkness yield to daylight
Shall it wholly pass away
Then be happy and let laughter
Bearing gifts to fortune’s feet
Cry aloud above the echoes
We are sure that life is sweet
Swear again as swore the Danaans
Oh, life could not be more sweet.
The Angel
Underneath the speckled leaves
Of the speckled laurel-tree
Sits an angel fawningly
Looking on the greenery.
But his eye is very cold
Bright as night and starry old
Though he sits so fawningly
Looking on the greenery.
O forbear enquiry.
Revenge
Revenge, Timotheus cries, and in that shout
There’s all there is about it and about
Between this man and men, whate’er befall
There is no word more to be said at all.
Lift Thy Sad Heart
Lift thy sad heart
Oh lift thy eyes
Lift thy sad heart.
Never more lifted
My heart shall be
Dead is my heart
Of misery.
Never more lifted
My eyes at all
From a low place
Of funeral.
Flounder
(Part of an Acrostic)
Rather a fishy thing to do –
And yet this is not wholly true.
The Pupil
Je ne peux le verstehen
Je ne peux pas le verstehen
Je ne peux pas le comprendre
Ich kann es nicht verstehen.
Portrait
Stupid and self-satisfied
S
tupid is the word
He sits and claps his own applause
Isn’t he absurd?
Isn’t he a darling baby
Crowing in the sun
Cockadoodle on the dunghill
Lots of happy fun?
Isn’t he a little monster –
Thirty-two?
My God
I should have said that he was two
Without the thirty. Odd.
Left, Right
Left, right;
Be bright.
Ichabod
Oh Ichabod, the glory is departed,
Those antique deserts and those happy palms
Bloom not for me, alone and broken hearted,
Stir but the sails of thought that grief becalms.
On Coming Late to Parnassus
Upon his loneliness and pain
Fame broke
Too strong a wave for him
And slew.
A Portrait
I never know what to say
When I’m in company
I feel quite tonguetied and shy,
I’m a perfect misery.
It really is tantalising,
And after the Education I’ve had
Surprising.
There’s nothing I’d rather say
Than something Edifying and Unusual.
The Horrible Man
He is a most horrible man,
Why look?
He is a horrible man
He has done something at which the crocodile
Grew wan
He has never done anything at all – no, not by chance,
At which the crocodile kept
Countenance
He is a most horrible man
The Octopus
Darling little Tom and Harry,
When time comes for you to marry,
Lullaby,
Mother will be close at hand,
Close at hand
Little girlies, you who marry
Darling Tom and darling Harry
By and by,
Understand
Mother will be close at hand,
Close at hand
As Sways
As sways the gentle sycamore
Beneath the winds of heaven,
So sways my inconsistent heart, dear love,
When you are far away;
So sways my inconstant heart, dear love,
And shall for ever sway.
No use for you to say:
‘Better the oak by tempest riven
Than nodding sycamore beneath the winds of heaven’
Portrait
Mr Petty-Pie
Keeps his masterpieces in his head,
He is a better tactician than I.
Silent, silent thought.
Never to be brought
To the printed page,
Weave a subtle shade.
O’er the facey-fie
Of little Petty-Pie;
And may its lineaments continue to suggest
A wisdom too profound to be expressed.
Two Friends
I only asked my friends to be friendly and polite,
I found them indifferent and censorious;
The one I left to silence, the other to reproach:
God send me over all such friends victorious
‘When I Awake’
When I awake
The whole returning flood of consciousness