by Stevie Smith
Is hateful to me
And Death, too often on my lips,
Becomes my shadower.
O Death, Death, Death,
Deceitful friend,
Come pounce,
And take,
And make
An end at once.
‘O Silent Visitation’
O silent visitation
In negation of all presences
O felicity of the imagination
O merit
Of integrity in solitude
Where was born the desolation
Of this night sky that lightly lightly
Treads upon the desert
In patience lost beyond cognizance
O desolate night sky
O profundity of patience
Bearing lightly lightly
Upon the desert of the time track
O behold in silence
The shapes of the prevision
That dance and turn again
From comprehension
I am waiting for you.
I Forgive You
I forgive you, Maria,
Things can never be the same,
But I forgive you, Maria,
Though I think you were to blame.
I forgive you, Maria,
I can never forget,
But I forgive you, Maria,
Kindly remember that.
‘The Midwife’
The midwife guards the mother’s health
But she herself is on the shelf
She cannot have a little child
And that is why she looks so wild.
The Royal Dane
Now is come the horrible mome,
When I to my sulphurous home,
Must go ’ome, must go ’ome.
O Lord!
from 2nd Messenger’s Speech to King Pentheus, Bacchae
This god then, O lord whoever he is do receive into the city
For not only is he great but also as I have heard
He gave the pain-killing vine to men.
Take away drink, where’s Love?
Any pleasure come to that, O lord there is nothing left.
The English
The English are our friends of course
And on we love them worse and worse
We like to see England looking shabby and poor
And to know that she will not be our rival any more.
You look a little pale? Is anything amiss?
Do you not like our beautiful peace-kiss?
Beautiful
Man thinks he was not born to die
But that’s no proof he wasn’t,
And those who would not have it so
Are very glad it isn’t.
Why should man wish to live for ever?
His term is merciful,
He riseth like a beaming plant
And fades most beautiful,
And his rising and his fading
Is most beautiful.
No, not the one without the other,
But always the two together,
Rising fading, fading rising,
It is really not surprising
To find this beautiful.
Why d’You Believe?
Why d’you believe that God is cruel
And life a hazard of eternity
Spent in a dim cage of cruel punishment?
Oh say not so, why say when you don’t know? –
That life beyond the grave and God are such,
Why not believe in something sweeter, oh
Why call Belief what is no more than Hope?
Each man when he believes, when there’s no ground for’t
But hopes, men don’t believe what’s only rumour’d.
Write that word right, say ‘hope’, don’t say ‘belief’,
Then plainly it’s absurd to hope for pain beyond relief.
Or does it give some drama when the dull
Pulse of the daily beats a shade too full?
Oh from men’s nerves, from the beginning, came
Such aggravation, he’ll believe in pain,
Long for it too, or else he’ll ‘hope’, and cry:
Things wrong in this world must be righted by and by.
All this is reasonable, in a man’s own sort
Of reason, it explains, but don’t excuse,
We learn the cause of man’s most savage heart,
Poor wretch, ’tis grounded in a nerve’s abuse,
Squirming, he gave us God in his own imagery,
A notion future centuries did well to query,
It really will not do for our own Tom and Mary,
Yes, in these later days I think we might
Contented, leave obscure what is obscure,
Rejoicing that beyond the grave is Night
Impenetrable, glad we can’t be sure,
Or sure, if sure at all, but sure of this,
Where speculation’s vain it’s also slothful,
No time is idlier spent than on theologies,
Though there’s a luxury in it one supposes,
Softening and puffing up the human creature
To make him the empyrean’s chief feature,
There is no end to what mere man can worship, come to that,
The leopard and the egg, black stone, old Egypt’s kitty-cat,
And much as witchcraft was a child’s endeavour
To sidestep learning Nature’s hard behaviour,
So nowadays, truth being hard still and quite impersonal,
You’ll find men plump for Holy Ghost and Saviour,
Fancy fulfilling and full-flattering more
Than Fact, the image of themselves they adore,
(Armed cap-a-pie, of course,
To make us all agree, lest worse Befall.)
But oh it is a sorry sort of business,
One can’t but sicken at the racks and bloodshed,
The centuries’ abuse, the social veto,
The tears forbidden that the people would shed.
Best sicken at what brought ’em, the neglect
Of simple Fact, prime food of Intellect,
Of which foul fancies are as much the enemies
As any dolled-up tramp in idle arms our bodies’ is.
O Church of Christ, O Bride of mien ferocious,
In fancy frantic and in deed atrocious,
What though thy scowl leans nowadays on a simper
We’re not deceived it means a better temper,
’Tis but a tribute to those Powers whose civil laws,
In countries protestant at least, have clipped your claws,
There’s little doubt,
Left to it, what you would be still about.
And it is natural. Crowning his own fancies
A man can scarce allow equivocation,
The matter’s without proof? then without mercy
He’ll call a fellow-creature’s fancies heresy,
(From which the proposition plainly runs:
A man may be far worse employed than doing sums.)
Not that I’d have imagination smothered,
It is a part of knowledge after all,
It draws us on. If recognised
For what it is, it does no harm at all.
If recognised? But then it often isn’t,
But wears a crown and puts us all in prison.
Beware, beware, authority sits ill
On Fancy. Ill? It is the devil,
To pull our nerves until they break
And say it’s done for true religion’s sake.
Know thy world, Man; through Art or Science, dote on it,
But do not build a fairy tale upon it.
The Vision
These before the worlds in congress
Stood to sing their songs in song-dress,
Never one was in a wrong dress
Never one was out of tune.
Oh it filled my heart with pity
Ah, so serious an
d pretty,
Stood my Race to sing its ditty,
Unsolicited.
The worlds were quite indifferent
As to how the singing went,
If the Race were elegant
They did not care.
But still the people stood and chanted
For to chant was all they wanted,
So their bravery was vaunted
Emptily, emptily.
Yet I was proud to see their singing,
Proud the human race was flinging
Such a song at such a ceiling
Gustily,
Then it vanished all away,
Worlds and singers went away;
Nothing now is left to say
But this: it was a vision.
Heartless
My little dog is called
Heartless,
His nature is
Heartless,
Yet when he barks he cries
‘Heartless, heartless’,
And this is a complaint,
So perhaps he will improve,
… one day learn to love?
‘Heartless!’, I call,
But he barks again
‘Heartless, heartless’
Only to complain.
I hope he finds where it is love is lacking,
And stops barking.
Silence
Why do people abuse so much our busy age?
They can withdraw into themselves and not rage
It is better to do this and live in one’s own kingdom
Than by raging add to the rage of our busy time.
This is a time when there are too many words,
Silent, silent, silent the waters lie
And the beautiful grass lies silent and this is beautiful,
Why can men then not withdraw and be silent and happy?
It is better to see the grass than write about it
Better to see the water than write a water-song,
Yet both may be painted and a person be happy in the painting,
Can it be that the tongue is cursed, to go so wrong?
The Old Poet
There was an old poet lay dying
And as he lay dying, said he (said he)
I’d’ve done much better as a literurry editor
Than a-writing of poetry
Hey ho, hey ho,
A-writing of poetry.
A literurry editor has great sensibility
Cried the old poet, cried he,
Why sometimes the creature’s even written a poem
God help us all, said he,
And got it published, and got it published, and got it published Coincidentally
Hey ho, hey ho, Coincidentally.
Then the poor old poet turned on his side
And to save putting another shilling in the gas meter
Died,
Hey ho, hey ho,
Died.
I walked in the graveyard …
I walked in the graveyard
The ghosts came to me:
‘Give us a saucer of blood!’
You will get no blood from me.
Then they took me and tore and drank
And called me by name
And drank my bright blood
As it ran in a stain.
It was for pity I fed them,
For pity stood still
In the land of the Shades
Now I dwell.
La Robe Chemise
Disarmed off-guard tendre et soumise
How foolish of women to abandon la Robe Chemise,
Especially Englishwomen with their long backs and bend serpentine –
Such figures look best without a waistline.
But of course the Americans would not have it, in that women-dominated place
All girls must be bright and brittle and have a tight waist.
Oh under the old trees of Europe, on the soft grass
I sigh for the tender ungirt dress,
Oh bring it back, bring it back, douce et soumise,
Bring back to my arms again la Robe Chemise.
If you will not allow the implication of this dress’s story
Say at least it is comfortable and be hypocritical,
For you cannot, unless you are stupid, not know it is irresistible
To be so off-guard gay tender and vulnerable.
From the French
I have plunged in a poem of the sea.
Alight with stars at first and growing milky
It ate the pretty blues and greens as I went down
And turned quite dark. There,
Like piece of flotsam torn about and stained,
A pensive corpse came floating to my side.
It was at this great depth I was aware
Of crimson flowing in the cold dark sea
All crimson, all bright red. I thought it was
As if our human love lay bleeding there,
Bleeding in anger, bleeding yet alive;
And I was glad, although I was not happy,
Because it was alive. The rest was dead.
The Holiday
The time is passing now
And will soon come
When you will be able
To go home.
The malice and the misunderstanding
The loneliness and the pain
Need not in this case, if you are careful,
Come again.
Say goodbye to the holiday, then.
To the peace you did not know,
And to the friends who had power over you,
Say goodbye and go.
When One
When one torments another without cease
It cannot but seem
It cannot but seem
That Death is the only release.
When two torment each other in this way
The one by being tormented easily
The other by tormenting actively
It cannot but seem
It cannot but seem
That Death, as he must come happily,
Should not delay.
Ah this unhappy Two
It seems as if
They never could leave off
Tormenting. And so nervily
All is done,
Death, quieten them.
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.
Miss Snooks, Poetess
Miss Snooks was really awfully nice
And never wrote a poem
That was not really awfully nice
And fitted to a woman,
She therefore made no enemies
And gave no sad surprises
But went on being awfully nice
And took a lot of prizes.
Saint Foam and the Holy Child
A Christmas Legend
On a black horse
A long time ago in a northern forest
Rode Rothga the heathen child.
Rothga, where are you riding?
Said a great witch.
I am not riding to see you,
Said Rothga.
Then came a bear who stood upright
Upon his hind legs: Where are you riding, Rothga,
Not that I mind? Well, not to see you.
And she rode more quickly. Because, she said,
There is not much time.
On, on they went,
The heathen child and her black horse,
Until the forest broke –
And they came to a seashore
where the great waves
Threw their froth and foam beneath the lights
Of a
northern sky.
Rothga left her black horse and ran
Down to the sea’s edge. I am in time,
She said, and laughed to see
Riding the greatest of the sea-waves
A Child of Light who cried:
I am new born tonight, in the city of Bethlehem.
Rothga, be sure I am.
I am sure, said Rothga. You must bless me.
I bless you Rothga, said the Child. I am come to save
All people from the malign witch,
From the indifferent bear
And from the dark forest.
Rothga, take this foam-curd for a token,
It shall never grow dull or grow less.
Rothga went home and said:
Father, mother, we have been blessed by a sea-child
Who gave me this for a token.
Thus it was there came to be built
As it stands today, the Great Church
Of St Foam and the Holy Child
On a northern shore.
B.B.C. Feature Programme on Prostitution
How hypocritical this dear old fellow is
Mr Something who runs the Nude Theatre,
He tells us it lifts the mind and is artistic
And does no harm in fact it does good
(And makes money. Beg pardon no that he did not say.)
And then he said, My girls don’t do so much
Harm as those stunted spinsters who write poison letters
And a good many other of your goody people who fancy themselves
Et cetera. Et cetera. And how artistic it is.
In the end you’d hardly have got this fine old creature to admit
Some girls off the streets are just as good as those on it.
After that in this interesting radio feature
The prostitutes spoke with an interviewing clergyman.
What do you think sin is? he asked ‘Judy’,
Judy said it was doing something for nothing,
No, she said, prostitution wasn’t wrong
It didn’t nearly do so much harm as
Stunted spinsters writing poison letters et cetera
But she wouldn’t go to church all the same
As long as she was doing it.
And all of them said it was dangerous
And not really very enjoyable
As often they got carved up or beaten or killed
But there you are, it was twenty pounds a week untaxed
(And a good deal more)
Compared with five in a job, subject to taxation.
So they all admitted money was the thing
(Being plainer than Mr Something, or stupider)
And money, money, not with the old alternative
Of nothing at all, but with not enough for the telly,
And not getting up to catch a bus to the office,
And having pink lampshades, and ultimately
Getting out of it with the money you had invested
And buying a place of your own and being respected.
So you see it’s money all the time and how to get it
And not caring about money is what is wicked
