All the Poems

by Stevie Smith

  ‘How is this when thou art living

  Foolish boy, in wrath beguiled?’

  ‘Ask me not,’ he said, and moving

  Passed into the distance dim.

  High the sun stood in the heavens,

  But no shadow followed him.

  Eng.

  What has happened to the young men of Eng.?

  Why are they so lovey-dovey

  so sad and so domesticated

  So sad and so philoprogenitive

  So sad and without sensuality?

  They love with a ci-devant feminine affection

  They see in their dreams a little home

  And kiddies

  Ah the kiddies

  They would not mind having babies:

  It is unkind

  Of Nature to lag behind.

  Death Bereaves our Common Mother Nature Grieves for my Dead Brother

  Lamb dead, dead lamb,

  He was, I am,

  Separation by a tense

  Baulks my eyes’ indifference.

  Can I see the lately dead

  And not bend a sympathetic head?

  Can I see lamb dead as mutton

  And not care a solitary button?

  Aubade

  My dove, my doe,

  I love you so,

  I cannot will not

  Let you go,

  ’Tis not the day lights yonder sky

  It is too soon

  I hear the cock’s discordant cry,

  He doodles to the moon.

  It is not day

  I say

  It is the moon.

  Alas, my love, it is the day,

  Born twin to sun, but opening first

  The womb of night.

  There lies the day,

  Her cheeks are gray,

  Alas so soon it is the day.

  And now in agony her dam will try

  To bring forth sun, and in fulfilment die.

  No easy birth is here,

  Before our eyes

  Night bleeds

  And, born caesareanwise,

  Her son in flaming gear

  Comes forth and her succeeds.

  Once more for man the heavenly twins are born,

  Farewell, my love, adieu, it is the dawn.

  Bag-Snatching in Dublin

  Sisley

  Walked so nicely

  With footsteps so discreet

  To see her pass

  You’d never guess

  She walked upon the street

  Down where the Liffy waters’ turgid flood

  Churns up to greet the ocean-driven mud,

  A bruiser in a fix

  Murdered her for 6/6.

  The River Deben

  All the waters of the river Deben

  Go over my head to the last wave even

  Such a death were sweet to seven times seven.

  Death sits in the boat with me

  His face is shrouded but he smiles I see

  The time is not yet, he will not come so readily.

  But he smiles and I smile it is pleasant in the boat at night

  There is no moon rising but from the east a light

  Shines in the sky, is it dawn or dawn’s twilight?

  Over here the waters are dark as a deep chasm

  Shadowed by cliffs of volcanic spasm

  So dark so dark is the waves’ fashion.

  But the oars dip I am rowing they dip and scatter

  The phosphorescence in a sudden spatter

  Of light that is more actual than a piece of matter.

  Up the Deben we row I row towards Waldringfield

  It is a long way yet, my arms ache but will not yield

  In this physical tiredness there is a happy shield.

  Oh happy Deben, oh happy night, and night’s companion Death,

  What exultation what ecstasy is in thy breath

  It is as salt as the salt silt that lies beneath.

  Flow tidal river flow, draw wind from the east,

  Smile pleasant Death, smile Death in darkness blessed,

  But tarry day upon the crack of dawn. Thou comest unwished.

  Death Came to Me

  Death came to me and said

  ‘Which will you choose?

  Use one

  Or all of these to summon me.

  I’ll come.’

  And with a smile he’d gone.

  There lay a knife

  A labelled flask a gun.

  I took the knife

  Its cruel edge would bite

  Into my flesh

  Had I the resolution or the art

  To bear the smart

  And drive it to my heart?

  Not I. I say

  I love my flesh too much

  For such

  A way.

  I took the flask and turned the label up –

  Eastern Syrop – what a stirrup cup

  For my short ride into eternity

  And what a shame

  To give a lordly drug so base a name

  That better than this bottleful

  Had decked a novelette by Mrs Hull.

  For underneath the superscription lurked I knew

  With pulses quickening and the blood thickening

  For fear in every vein the deadly strychnine

  It paralysed the heart at once they said, but I

  Had not the heart to try.

  I took the revolver in my hand and broke it open.

  A Webley, service pattern, is a useful weapon

  I liked it for the magazine chock-full

  Of ammunition, liked the full

  Shimmer of its barrel in the firelight’s glimmer.

  It had an air of quiet distinction lying there.

  The handmaid of extinction

  I snapped it to,

  It weighed about a ton,

  And two

  Were on the trigger

  Phew

  I put it to my head

  And now I’m dead.

  No Respect

  I have no respect for you

  For you would not tell the truth about your grief

  But laughed at it

  When the first pang was past

  And made a thing of nothing.

  You said

  That what had been

  Had never been

  That what was

  Was not:

  You have a light mind

  And a coward’s soul.

  The Reason

  My life is vile

  I hate it so

  I’ll wait a while

  And then I’ll go.

  Why wait at all?

  Hope springs alive,

  Good may befall

  I yet may thrive.

  It is because I can’t make up my mind

  If God is good, impotent or unkind.

  I Like to Play with Him

  I like to play with him

  He would be so lovely to play with

  He is so solemn sensitive conceited

  He would be so lovely to play with

  I could pretend

  Say so-and-so

  and so-and-so

  Watch his responses

  How’d he take that today

  And this tomorrow,

  Mood, tense, you see

  I’d conjugate His Inexcellency.

  Oh on that evening you were

  So charming enchanting touching

  Lost wounded and betrayed

  Oh that should have been only the beginning.

  Analysand

  He chases his tail

  Like a puppy-fool

  And wonders it tastes stale

  The puppy-fool.

  All thoughts that are turned inwards to their source

  Bring one to self-hatred and remorse

  Their punishment is suicide of course.

  But first he’ll tread

  A calvary

  From bed to bed

  Of
misery

  And lying thinking on his bed of stone

  No sleep will come to him he is alone

  For evermore with every aching bone.

  His spirit flags

  His body slumps

  His spirit nags

  His mental dumps.

  Self dedicated to self scrutiny

  His every moment’s an eternity

  Of irritation and monotony.

  For fuss and fret

  His tears fall down

  His brow is set

  In savage frown.

  Is it surprising Reader do you think?

  Would you expect to find him in the pink?

  Who’s solely occupied with his own mental stink?

  All Things Pass

  All things pass

  Love and mankind is grass.

  Sunt Leones

  The lions who ate the Christians on the sand of the arena

  By indulging native appetites played what has now been seen a

  Not entirely negligible part

  In consolidating at the very start

  The position of the Early Christian Church.

  Initiatory rites are always bloody

  And the lions, it appears

  From contemporary art, made a study

  Of dyeing Coliseum sands a ruddy

  Liturgically sacrificial hue

  And if the Christians felt a little blue –

  Well people being eaten often do.

  Theirs was the death, and theirs the crown undying,

  A state of things which must be satisfying.

  My point which up to this has been obscured

  Is that it was the lions who procured

  By chewing up blood gristle flesh and bone

  The martyrdoms on which the Church has grown.

  I only write this poem because I thought it rather looked

  As if the part the lions played was being overlooked.

  By lions’ jaws great benefits and blessings were begotten

  And so our debt to Lionhood must never be forgotten.

  I do not Speak

  I do not ask for mercy for understanding for peace

  And in these heavy days I do not ask for release

  I do not ask that suffering shall cease.

  I do not pray to God to let me die

  To give an ear attentive to my cry

  To pause in his marching and not hurry by.

  I do not ask for anything I do not speak

  I do not question and I do not seek

  I used to in the day when I was weak.

  Now I am strong and lapped in sorrow

  As in a coat of magic mail and borrow

  From Time today and care not for tomorrow.

  Lord Mope

  What shall we say of this curious young man?

  Scion of aristocracy sycophant of eld

  Sitting at the feet of the old men because they are old

  Warming his shivering behind at their gutted flame…

  Brace up oh bunny heart, that man’s no sage

  Though the years heap on his head, be not deceived.

  Each year is but a weight

  To sky his empty pate

  Nearer to heaven’s gate

  Nearer his god to him

  (His god of prejudice and whim).

  Oh fearful young man shivering ridiculously

  What shall I say to give you heart oh poor young man?

  No shield is in the old

  Better to be young and cold

  (Shivering ridiculously in your four-and-twenty years)

  Better to be young, a Cry-baby, a Pet,

  Than to be an old man, mouthing in a fret.

  Better to be young and let the cold tears fall and ravage

  Than to be an Old Boy, senile, simian and savage.

  Feminine Charm

  O never girl beneath the skies of Italy

  Or maiden singing in the vales of Sicily

  Or matron carding wool in Thessaly

  Or skivvy washing up in Beverley

  Gave man such joy as Bessie, Bessie Leigh,

  Daughter of Mr and of Mrs Leigh.

  To the Dog Belvoir

  whom I saw in a Dream Push Baby N. from under a Brewer’s Dray and Die in His Place

  The stricken Belvoir raised a paw and said:

  I die a perfect gentle quadruped.

  Never Again

  Never again will I weep

  And wring my hands

  And beat my hands against the wall

  Because

  Me nolentem fata trahunt

  But

  When I have had enough

  I will arise

  And go unto my Father

  And I will say to Him:

  Father, I have had enough.

  Little Boy Lost

  The wood was rather old and dark

  The witch was very ugly

  And if it hadn’t been for father

  Walking there so smugly

  I never should have followed

  The beckoning of her finger.

  Ah me how long ago it was

  And still I linger

  Under the ever interlacing beeches

  Over a carpet of moss

  I lift my hand but it never reaches

  To where the breezes toss

  The sun-kissed

  leaves above.

  The sun?

  Beware.

  The sun never comes here.

  Round about and round I go

  Up and down and to and fro

  The woodlouse hops upon the tree

  Or should do but I really cannot see.

  Happy fellow. Why can’t I be

  Happy as he?

  The wood grows darker every day

  It’s not a bad place in a way

  But I lost the way

  Last Tuesday

  Did I love father, mother, home?

  Not very much; but now they’re gone

  I think of them with kindly toleration

  Bred inevitably of separation.

  Really if I could find some food

  I should be happy enough in this wood

  But darker days and hungrier I must spend

  Till hunger and darkness make an end.

  Does No Love Last?

  I stand I fall

  The depths appal

  Upon my knees upon the bridge I fall.

  Far down below

  I see in fancy

  My body spread

  That in a frenzy

  Down I cast.

  ’Tis broken now and bloody.

  Does no love last?

  Death of the Dog Belvoir

  Belvoir thy coat was not more golden than thy heart

  That beats no more

  Now thy fled spirit

  Delicate and suave

  Thy virtue’s core

  Above the grave must soar.

  Alas for baronet bereft

  Of noble dog and left

  To bear the mourner’s part.

  Let funeral smart

  And dirge

  Be all my song

  And my song’s urge

  Ding dong.

  For nobler heart beat never in more noble breast

  And of beasts best

  Thou with the least

  In Death art dresst.

  Farewell

  Ding dong

  Dear dog so ends my song.

  Angel of Grace

  I was talking one day

  To a lady gay

  When my Guardian Angel

  Plucked me away:

  Where can she be

  Oh where does she wander

  That lady of whom

  I grow fonder and fonder?

  Freddy

  Nobody knows what I feel about Freddy

  I cannot make anyone understand

  I love him sub specie aeternitatis

  I love him out of hand.

  I don’t l
ove him so much in the restaurants that’s a fact

  To get him hobnob with my old pub chums needs too much tact

  He don’t love them and they don’t love him

  In the pub lub lights they say Freddy very dim.

  But get him alone on the open saltings

  Where the sea licks up to the fen

  He is his and my own heart’s best

  World without end ahem.

  People who say we ought to get married ought to get smacked:

  Why should we do it when we can’t afford it and have ourselves whacked?

  Thank you kind friends and relations thank you,

  We do very well as we do.

  Oh what do I care for the pub lub lights

  And the friends I love so well –

  There’s more in the way I feel about Freddy

  Than a friend can tell.

  But all the same I don’t care much for his meelyoo I mean

  I don’t anheimate mich in the ha-ha well-off suburban scene

  Where men are few and hearts go tumptytum

  In the tennis club lub lights poet very dumb.

  But there never was a boy like Freddy

  For a haystack ivory’s tower of bliss

  Where speaking sub specie humanitatis

  Freddy and me can kiss.

  Exiled from his meelyoo

  Exiled from mine

  There’s all Tom Tiddler’s time pocket

  For his love and mine.

  Appetite

  Let me know

  Let me know

  Let me go

  Let me go

  Let me have him

  Let me have him

  How I love him

  How I love him.

  From My Notes for a Series of Lectures on Murder

  It is not difficult to kill

  Your enemy if you’ve sufficient will

  But murderers are often in a hurry

  And simply will not take the time to bury

  The murderee. I’ll indicate tomorrow

  Just why this course is not for you to follow.

  Is it Wise?

  Is it wise

  To hug misery

  To make a song of Melancholy

  To weave a garland of sighs

  To abandon hope wholly?

  No, it is not wise.

  Is it wise

  To love Mortality

  To make a song of Corruptibility

  A chain of linked lies

  To bind Mutability?

  No, it is not wise.

  Is it wise

  To endure

  To call up Old Fury

  And Pain for a martyr’s dowry

  When Death’s a prize

  Easy to carry?

  No, it is not wise.

  This Englishwoman

  This Englishwoman is so refined

  She has no bosom and no behind.

  Lord Barrenstock

  Lord Barrenstock and Epicene,

  What’s it to me that you have been

  In your pursuit of interdicted joys

  Seducer of a hundred little boys?

  Your sins are red about your head

  And many people wish you dead.

  You trod the widow in the mire.

  Wronged the son, deceived the sire.

  You put a fence about the land