by Stevie Smith
Our Bog is Dood
Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood,
They lisped in accents mild,
But when I asked them to explain
They grew a little wild.
How do you know your Bog is dood
My darling little child?
We know because we wish it so
That is enough, they cried,
And straight within each infant eye
Stood up the flame of pride,
And if you do not think it so
You shall be crucified.
Then tell me, darling little ones,
What’s dood, suppose Bog is?
Just what we think, the answer came,
Just what we think it is.
They bowed their heads. Our Bog is ours
And we are wholly his.
But when they raised them up again
They had forgotten me
Each once upon each other glared
In pride and misery
For what was dood, and what their Bog
They never could agree.
Oh sweet it was to leave them then,
And sweeter not to see,
And sweetest of all to walk alone
Beside the encroaching sea,
The sea that soon should drown them all,
That never yet drowned me.
Wretched Woman
Wretched woman that thou art
How thou piercest to my heart
With thy misery and graft
And thy lack of household craft.
Lightly Bound
You beastly child, I wish you had miscarried,
You beastly husband, I wish I had never married.
You hear the north wind riding fast past the window? He calls me.
Do you suppose I shall stay when I can go so easily?
Le Revenant
My Uncle from the realms of Death
Returned to draw an earthly breath
And as he walked upon the heath
The wild wind whistled through his teeth.
He came unto a habitation
That was the centre of the nation
He knocked upon each house and said:
It is much better to be dead.
And when they stoned him from the door
He vowed he would come back no more.
Friskers
or
Gods and Men
Oh what can be happening pray what are they at?
Oh why am I slowly turning into a cat?
Is it Zeus responsible, tired of my love
Does he send me outside with the puss cats to rove?
Or indifferent rather, quite sick of it all,
Is he simply letting Hera have her way with a rival?
Oh look at my beautiful coat and my handsome whiskers,
I shall be most loved of all the young cats and I shall be called Friskers.
Cool and Plain
Cool and plain
Cool and plain
Was the message of love on the window pane.
Soft and quiet
Soft and quiet
It vanished away in the fogs of night.
To School!
Let all the little poets be gathered together in classes
And let prizes be given to them by the Prize Asses
And let them be sure to call all the little poets young
And worse follow what’s bad begun
But do not expect the Muse to attend this school
Why look already how far off she has flown, she is no fool.
To an American Publisher
You say I must write another book? But I’ve just written this one.
You liked it so much that’s the reason? Read it again then.
The Rehearsal
I always admire a beautiful woman
And I’ve bought you some flowers for your beautiful bosom.
Death-bed of a Financier
Deal not with me God as I have dealt with Man
In the prosperity which thou hast given me
Helpless in his need a careless course I ran
And now oh Lord that thou hast driven me
To my last gasp, I pray for all I am not worth
Deal not with me as I have dealt on earth.
The Hat
I love my beautiful hat more than anything
And through my beautiful hat I see a wedding ring
The King will marry me and make me his own before all
And when I am married I shall wear my hat and walk on the palace wall.
Thank You
We have no father and no mother
We are often taken for one another
What are we looking for over the wall?
We are not looking for anything at all.
The Ride
Riding slowly along the banks of a canal
Where the dredges had been at work and the slime lay piled,
I rode in Egypt slowly, slowly with Captain Fairchild,
Under a black sun, on an oppressive afternoon.
Pricking our dull horses to an even pace
We rode beside the black slide, mile upon mile,
Between the slime mounds, beside the black deep water.
Suddenly the captain turning smiled into my face,
Smiling with a black smile, pale beneath his burnt skin,
Smiling he said, if the Sultana of Istanbuol
Had in her Household a Grand Vizier so old
That he was alive in the Napoleonic Wars,
What is it, he said, she would most wish him to forget?
My hand for a moment lay slack upon the rein,
And my horse checking stood still with lowered head,
Oh, I said carelessly, the slime and the black slime,
The slime and the length and the slime
Of the ramshackle Ottoman Empire.
Well my dear chap, said the Captain smiling,
It always comes to that, but we know do we not,
That the slime and the black slime is something we can parry
With a Byronic connotation and a note in time.
I Am
Far from normal far from normal far from normal I am
He sighed as he stood on the river bank and watched where the fishes swam
But ever the wind in the willow trees whispered, I am: I am.
He saw the variety of nature
The ant the mole and the sky
And resignedly hurried upon his way
Crying: I, I; I, I;
Then a priest came and told him if he was good
And thought as he ought and did as he should
He should be saved by the Lamb’s fresh blood.
Oh I know, I know the poor man cries,
I know the worth of the heavenly prize
And I know the strength of the race to be run
But my black heart cleaves to the strength of my gun.
Then he put his gun to his head and shot
Crying absurdly, I am not.
The Crown of Bays
They gave him a crown of bays and dressed him up,
But he was listless though famous, he had had enough.
He looked at the audience, they are clapping knaves,
And turning to the Winged Form, Who are you? he says.
‘I am the Angel of the Considered Bays.’
When you go back I will follow you, he said.
‘To do that, you must be dead.’
I ask it; this people is a basket.
He laid his head in the angel’s lap,
Oh let me come with you, let me come.
‘Can you say farewell to the people in deep slumbers
Who travel by the Underground railway with happy faces in numbers?’
These, and these
He said (thinking of the sleepers and the audience) tease,
Let me come with you.
‘Only those who expect everything are prepared to take nothing,’
&nb
sp; Said the angel slyly, as posing a conundrum,
‘Death may be that.’
Still lead; I follow, pat pat.
‘Can you say farewell to the Natural Beauties?’
Yes, I look at them through a glass cage, the glaze sullies.
The angel waves a hand and under a tree,
A mighty chestnut whose fine branches
The spring with white flowers enhances,
Lay the bay-crowned Misery.
Oh Angel of Bays, he cries, weeping bitterly,
You have forged a dagger with your visions for my penalty,
Crack my heart, pierce throat, I will come with you,
I only used to think it was worth while living for the view.
How beautiful the sky is that is bright blue
Through the green leaves, and the sun warms through and through
Before a man hangs they give him what he likes to eat,
So you have given me what I like to see, the trees and no street,
Now to the scaffold, Angel, do your part,
I will come with you. (The angel stabs him to the heart.)
As he lay bleeding his last into the untrod earth
He smiled a happy smile and said:
I had a philosophy of use and wont, it was bad;
I conceded that life was a balance with
Only three ha’pence to the liver’s credit.
But to live with three ha’pence was a merit.
I held that nothing to have not wholly bad not wholly good
Was a young man’s dream and juvenile aspiration,
Now I am come to the young man’s situation,
And expecting everything gladly receive annihilation.
‘You receive what I do not know,’
Said the angel, and with this word
Flies away and leaves him lying upon the sward.
But over his shoulder airborne came these last words, ‘Briefly
In my opinion for what it is worth, you die trivially.’
Homage to John Cowper Powys
This old man is sly and wise,
He knows the truth, he tells no lies,
He is as deep as a British pool.
And Monsieur Poop may think him a fool.
Little Child of Brightest Face
Little Child of brightest face
Do you do you know your place?
Underneath the table pray
Where the little fishes play.
Our Office Cat
Our Office cat is a happy cat
She has had two hundred kittens
And every one has been adopted into happy homes
By our cat-loving Britons.
A Jew is Angry with his Friend who does not Believe in Circumcision
Oh ho uncircumciséd Sadducee I see
In all created time not one as thee
Befoul the cradle whence he came
Take a great name and make it a great shame
Take it and make it on the lips of the heathen a gibe
Not the name of a sect, not Sadducee, Pharisee or Scribe
But Jew Jew Jew
Should have taught you all that we knew
With a racial knowledge in the Pentateuchal days of old
Before the time had come for Sadducees to be so very bold
As to be so bold as to be too modern for circumcision
Oh mockery of Greek and Roman, oh derision
Of the derided
Now I have you, manikin, depend
I’ll dock you of your foreskin and something else that will end
All hope of posterity, no little Sadducees will you beget
When I’ve finished with you, but sit in a eunochy fret
Waiting for death to relieve you of a hated life
You look a little pale? What ho, a knife, a knife.
From the Coptic
Three angels came to the red red clay
Where in a heap it formless lay,
Stand up, stand up, thou lazy red clay,
Stand up and be Man this happy day.
Oh in its bones the red clay groaned,
And why should I do such a thing? it said,
And take such a thing on my downy head?
Then the first angel stood forth and said,
Thou shalt have happiness, thou shalt have pain,
And each shall fall turn and about again,
And no man shall say when the day shall fall
That thou shalt be happy or not at all.
And the second angel said much the same
While the red clay lay flat in the falling rain,
Crying, I will stay clay and take no blame.
Then the third angel rose up and said,
Listen thou clay, raise thy downy head,
When thou hast heard what I have to say
Thou shalt rise Man and go man’s way.
What have you to promise? the red clay moans,
What have you in store for my future bones?
I am Death, said the angel, and death is the end,
I am Man, cries clay rising, and you are my friend.
A Humane Materialist at the Burning of a Heretic
When shall that fuel fed fire grown fatter
Burn to consumption and a pitter patter
Of soft ash falling in a formless scatter
Telling Mind’s death in a dump of Matter.
In Protocreation
In protocreation
Is my imagination
And in my world’s first emergence from gaseous fire
My desire.
Then heaved the earth
In a first vegetable birth
Later according to the record
Experimental animals walked abroad.
The awkward pterodactyl
The brontosaurus
The mammoth and the early lizard
Were before us.
Oh had it but stopped then
Oh had there not come men.
Earth fired
And the seas smoked
Heavy heavy swung the swamp
Crust broke and the mountains poked.
Oh had it but stopped then
Oh had there not come men.
In that high and early time
There was no good deed and no crime
No oppression by informed mind
No knowledge and no human kind.
Do Not!
Do not despair of man, and do not scold him,
Who are you that should so lightly hold him?
Are you not also a man, and in your heart
Are there not warlike thoughts and fear and smart?
Are you not also afraid and in fear cruel,
Do you not think of yourself as usual,
Faint for ambition, desire to be loved,
Prick at a virtuous thought by beauty moved?
You love your wife, you hold your children dear,
Then say not that Man is vile, but say they are.
But they are not. So is your judgement shown
Presumptuous, false, quite vain, merely your own
Sadness for failed ambition set outside,
Made a philosophy of, prinked, beautified
In noble dress and into the world sent out
To run with the ill it most pretends to rout.
Oh know your own heart, that heart’s not wholly evil,
And from the particular judge the general,
If judge you must, but with compassion to see life,
Or else, of yourself despairing, in death flee strife.
The Death Sentence
Cold as No Plea,
Yet wild with all negation,
Weeping I come,
To my heart’s destination,
To my last bed
Between th’unhallowed boards –
The Law allows it
And the Court awards.
The Commuted Sentence
Shut me not alive away
&nbs
p; From the light of every day
Hang me rather by the neck to die
Against a morning sky.
Oh shut me not behind a prison wall
I have a horror of this sort of place
Where I may sit and count the hours pass
And never see a smiling human face.
Here is all straight and narrow as a tomb
Oh shut me not within a little room.
The Celtic Fringe
Kathleen ni Houlihan
Walking down the boule-igan
Ran into a hooligan
Ah ha, Kathleen ni Houlihan.
She went with the rat-ican
And very soon they had a brat-ican
Ah ha, Kathleen ni Houlihan
How goes it now?
They called him Rebel-can
Oh he was a devil-can
Kathleen ni Houlihan
Your son.
And the big black cat-ican
That sat on the mat-ican
With a pit and a pati-can
Spit. Spat.
Was the chief sport
Oh the Houlihan sort
And chiefly did Rebel-can
Twitch his tail, the devil-can.
All up the boule-igan
Runs Kathleen ni Houlihan
For flirting his tail the cat is gone,
They are alone.
And that is how the Houlihan
Fell out in the boule-igan
Whose tail shall they twitch now?
Eh, Kathleen, the cat is gone.
The Leader
Men fear the hollow man at the top of the tree
He is supported they say by a phoney majority
But the squirrel brings nuts and the mole brings meal
And the cock brings the spur from the tip of his heel
And they none of them dare say what they feel
For he kills as he wills does that horrible He
Who sits at the top of the old oak tree.
Oh foolish they are who keep his rules
And bring him food, they are surely fools
When it is plain as a pikestaff bold
They should run him out in the cold, cold, cold
Or burn him up in the hot fury
Of a flame that will lick to the top of a tree.
Oh if only they had some sense
The squirrel might store for her own expense
The cock at his heel find a use for the spur
And the mole with the meal sleek the young mole’s fur.
But they will not do it, they are so frightened
Of what they have raised and the tree has heightened
Then come along with a sigh and a leap
For this people runs mad in the Fuehrer Prinzip.
Yes they will have a lord and it matters not who
Be he hollow as a drum he will do, do, do.
Oh, If Only …
The intellectual Englishman shrank away from the bedside.
There in the bed lay the Englishwoman Blah in the arms of Captain Thomas.
Oh, the ineffable smug look of Blah (thought the young intellectual)
