Complete Poems

by Cecil Day-Lewis

  Whom passion, flaring up too high, too sudden,

  Blackened like a lamp-chimney. Oh, long-dead flame!

  They say there comes a lightening before death.

  Light, any light, come – ray of mercy or bale-fire –

  And run some stitch of meaning through my life,

  The shreds and snippets of that Madeleine,

  Her after-life!

  Well, there were compensations,

  They think? The wicked prospered? George was kind,

  Smooring the question in his heart. Affluence

  We had: travel: the house in Onslow Gardens:

  Artists and thinkers round us – William Morris,

  William de Morgan: the Social Democrat Club.

  Yes, I was quite a firebrand for those days …

  A brand plucked from the burning: charred, chastened –

  So you would figure me, all you respectable

  Fathers and mothers of nubile daughters who

  Must cool their blood with albums, prayers, tea-parties?

  I hear your judgment, hypocrites, mealy-mouthed

  Over the porridge at the mahogany sideboards:

  ‘Guilty or innocent of murder, she

  Has shamed our womanhood. Illicit love

  Were shame enough; but that a female should

  Write to her lover, exulting in the act,

  Baring herself in words to acknowledge pleasure –

  Depraved! Unnatural! Doubtless she repents now.’

  Repentance? Shame? Little you know, Papa,

  Nor you, Lord Justice-Clerk, sitting in judgment

  On me, where lies the core of my remorse,

  The cancer of my shame …

  No, they are dead,

  Those stuffed men – long ago dead. Foolish Madeleine,

  Dreaming yourself once more back to the trial,

  The aftermath! Aye, at one bound, as if

  The years between were a wee burn to jump

  And not the insipid mere, the bottomless pit

  Which has swallowed up my youth, my pride, my graces

  Like dumped rubbish, and still been unfulfilled.

  Would I return, live it again, to keep death

  Waiting a while for me? Would the old actress

  Re-live her greatest triumph! – and not to stay death;

  To spurn him from the pinnacle of her fame.

  Yes, I would walk as then, flushed with achievement,

  Out of the cheering courtroom through the chill

  Silence of Rowaleyn (Papa frock-coated,

  A plaster figure of repudiation,

  The family Jehovah buttoned up in

  Self-righteous outrage; brothers and sisters cowed

  Less by his wrath than by my flung defiance:

  Mother, of course, had taken to her bed) –

  Stride like a tragic heroine, through that last

  Ordeal, into my life’s long anti-climax.

  Dusk already? What time is it? My skin

  Sweats cold. Doctor! You cannot let me die –

  Not yet! Madeleine Smith must go to court:

  Her trial is not yet over. She must live

  Through the command performance once again.

  Doctor!… Doctor, are you familiar with

  The signs of poisoning by arsenic? No,

  He is not here. Contempt of court. And I

  Despise it too – the cant and rigmarole

  Of the Law. Quick then, Madeleine, dress yourself:

  Demure black mantle, and the straw scoop-bonnet

  Trimmed with white ribbon, leaving your face naked

  To all the prurient, cringing eyes – unveiled,

  But in its cold, bold calm inviolable.

  Madeleine takes the dock – how did they put it? –

  With the air of a belle entering a ballroom.

  See,

  The room fills up with shadows – a sibilant audience

  Of ghosts: they rise: Hope, Handyside and Ivory,

  Robed and bewigged, come soberly on – dead men

  To sit in judgment on a dying actress.

  No, no, my Lords, it is not you, tricked out

  In gravity and fine feathers, who will make

  This play immortal; nor you, Lord Advocate,

  Plaiting your rope of logic round my neck;

  Nor even you, John Inglis, Dean of Faculty,

  My eloquent defender: no, it is I,

  The silent heroine of the wordy drama,

  Who pack your theatre day after day.

  Let them drone on – what do I care? – over

  That trash, that reptile thing which died writhing.

  Ah, how the drab years fly up like a blind

  At his vile touch, to show the lighted past!

  And through that scene, a play behind a play,

  Moncrieff, Lord Advocate, frigidly weaving

  His figured plot … On such and such occasions

  The panel purchased arsenic, stating that

  It was to kill rats, or for her complexion.

  On such and such occasions the deceased

  Took ill; and the third time he died of it.

  We’ve no eye-witness: but no doubt the panel

  Administered the poison in a cup

  Of cocoa which she handed to her lover

  That last night through the basement window of

  The house in Blythswood Square, the scene of previous

  Assignations – passed it across the space

  Between her window and the railings, where

  She had been used to put her letters for

  Pierre Emile L’Angelier to pick up –

  Those passionate letters which he threatened now

  To show her father, if she would not abandon

  Her purpose of wedding another, William Minnoch.

  To all the panel’s desperate entreaties

  That he should return her letters, L’Angelier

  Was adamant. Rather than be exposed

  As a vicious wanton and ruined irretrievably,

  She murdered him. That is the Crown’s case.

  ‘What did you think, Miss Smith, of the Lord Advocate’s

  Address?’ When I have heard the Dean of Faculty,

  I’ll tell you. I never like to give an opinion

  Until I have heard both sides of the question.

  By God! I was a pert young lassie then,

  And fearless too – letting my wit dance

  On the scaffold’s trap-door, over the drop, the quick-lime –

  So you believed? Or a monster from the Pit,

  Murderess, whore, with the vibrant, mordant tongue

  Of the damned? But I was neither, I tell you; only

  A woman, the husk that’s left of a woman after

  Premature birth, when her rich, quickened body

  Has dropped a stillborn thing (dropped? aborted?)

  A love, conceived in ecstasy, that became

  A deadweight burden, a malignant growth

  Of self-disgust …

  But listen, the Dean of Faculty

  Rises to address the jury. Listen.

  Gentlemen of the Jury, the charge against the prisoner

  is murder, and the punishment of murder is death;

  and that simple statement is sufficient to suggest to us

  the awful solemnity of the occasion

  which brings you and me face to face.

  Inglis! Listen to me, Inglis. You must drive home

  The point about my letters. The prosecution

  Has said I would go any length to stop

  Those letters being revealed. And so I would have,

  Almost, but not to the folly of–oh, they must

  Realize there was no surer way of having

  My letters to him made public than for Emile

  To die by poison. Do they suppose that I

  Would not see this? They insult my intelligence. But

  The panel is a woman:
all men know

  The weaker sex have little power of reason.

  Weaker? Pah! Why, why must I be silent

  While self-important lawyers play at ball

  With my life? No, I will speak!

  My Lords, and you

  Gentlemen of the jury, listen to me.

  Lay by your masks, all this majestic flummery –

  You, lords of creation, who keep us women

  To fawn on you, be petted, brought to heel –

  And think: although nature has trained our bodies

  To fawn, our hearts to love subjection, how would

  A woman – slave and Spartacus to her sex –

  Once she’d revolted from this rule of nature,

  Loathe him for whom nature had made her kneel!

  And what if such a woman found her master,

  Not weak, vain, tyrannous merely – you are all so –

  But abject, sirs, abject as a maggot

  That clings to the flesh it has gorged on? a maggot who,

  After his first meal, sermonized to me

  About the weakness of my flesh! Ach, men,

  The moral hypochondriacs, for ever

  Coddling their timid minds against the real,

  Medicining themselves with patent lies

  And sedative abstractions – look, how bravely

  Cowardice makes a conscience for them all!

  I am accused of poisoning my lover.

  Bring him to trial, I say. Let Pierre Emile

  L’Angelier be arraigned for poisoning love.

  Aye, the deep wells of my awakened body,

  The pent abundance, and the dancing fountains

  That leapt and wept for him like paradise trees

  In diamond leaf – he tainted them. How soon

  My springs went bitter and the loving cup

  Tasted metallic!… Sirs, you have marvelled at

  My strange composure. Do you not recognize

  The calm of a face prepared for burial? Which,

  Which is the tragic victim? – one who dies

  Vomiting up a trumpery soul? or one

  Who, legend-high in love, proud as Diana,

  Awakes to find her matchless Prince deformed

  Into a Beast, a puny, whimpering lapdog?

  Oh waste, waste, waste! Sir, I plead guilty of

  Self-mutilation. Cutting that hateful image

  Out of my heart, I should have bled to death:

  But hatred’s a fine cautery for such wounds,

  And love as wild as mine needs but a flick of

  Indignity or disrelish to become

  That searing, healing, all-redeeming hatred.

  But what do you know of such things, my Lords,

  With your tame wives and farthing-dips of lust?

  As for this trial of yours – a man has ceased,

  A paltry creature whom my passion exalted

  Into a figment of its own white fire.

  That furnace proved him dross. He is better dead,

  My Lords …

  My Lords! Hear me out! Why do they –

  Hope, Handyside and Ivory – why withdraw,

  Dissolve to moonshine? Moonshine, and a haze of

  Branches knitted above me. I am caged in

  From the star-daisied heaven. Ah, my rowans:

  The garden of Rowaleyn, and beside me –

  Emile! Emile, wake up! I have had a terrible

  Dream. I dreamt that I had – dreamt that you

  Were dead. Comfort me. Do not be cold.

  You are not angry with me? I am your wife now,

  Truly your wife, the woman you’ve created

  As God created woman. I worship you.

  Listen to my heart, Emile – close, come closer –

  How the blood pulses for you, calm and crazing

  As torrents of moonshine; crazed and calmed by you.

  Husband, speak to me. Do not be afraid:

  They are all asleep in the house. Papa is sleeping

  The sleep of the self-righteous: he’ll never dream

  That I’d creep out to you, your cat, your vixen,

  For a midsummer mating. Are you ashamed

  Because I am so shameless in love? But I

  Have high blood in these veins; dare-devil blood:

  My kin’s not all the halfway kind who live

  Haltered by prudence and propriety – no,

  Remember, I am Madeleine Hamilton Smith.

  Why are you silent, Emile? – and so cold,

  Clay-cold to my fevered lips! The night is chill

  For June, and you are delicate: you must go, love:

  Your Mimi must not be the death of you.

  Go quickly, then. We shall soon be together –

  One bed, one life – for always. I will coax

  Papa, or else defy him. I am all yours now.

  Quick! – by the side gate … Why will you not go?

  Are you frozen to my side? Leave me! No, no more

  Loving – get away from me! You shall not –

  Oh!

  The fearful dream! Loathing. A clay man:

  Incubus from the grave. What was he doing

  Here at my bedside? trying to fright me into

  Death-bed confession? Always he misprized me,

  Misjudged: it is not well to underrate

  A woman such as I … Had I been born

  Fifty years later, I should leave the world

  Richer for me and be remembered as

  A maker, a pioneer, not an enigma.

  What an end for the Lucifer who rebelled

  Against their sanctimonious, whiskered god –

  To be smuggled out, like a prisoner who has served

  Life-sentence, by a side door of the jail,

  Fameless and futureless!

  Who’s this at my door

  In black among the shadows? A minister?

  I have nothing to say to you. Nothing. He draws

  Nearer. It is the minister of bone.

  Sir, I shall be no burden for you to carry.

  I am light and small now – small in your arms:

  A wisp of flesh; some courage; and what weighs

  Heavier than they – my secret. I can trust you

  With it. Hold me up. It is hard to speak,

  To breathe. Whose hand – the cup of poison? His?

  Mine? But so long ago it happened, how

  Can I be sure? Their busy arguments

  Hummed in my ears like echoes from a dream,

  Making unreal all that had passed between us,

  Emile and me, till I became two phantasms –

  One innocent, one guilty, and the truth

  Went down in the gulf between them, the real I –

  What she had done or not done – sinking away

  From me, dubious, hidden, lost, amid

  A fog and welter of words.

  It lies too deep now

  In the black ooze. My heart quakes. The sea-bed

  Heaves. Last agony. Heaves to give up its dead.

  I cannot. Sir, have mercy on me. Make haste.

  I am heavy with you. Deliver me.

  Madeleine, Madeleine, tell me the truth.

  I have forgotten … long ago … forgotten.

  Wind’s Eye

  Eye of the wind, whose bearing in

  A changeful sky the sage

  Birds are never wrong about

  And mariners must gauge –

  The drift of flight, the fluttered jib

  Are what we know it by:

  Seafarers cannot hold or sight

  The wind’s elusive eye.

  That eye, whose shifting moods inspire

  The sail and trim the sheet,

  Commands me, though I can but steer

  Obliquely towards it.

  In Loving Memory

  E. M. BUTLER1

  1

  ‘Goodbye’ – the number of times each day one says it!

  But t
he goodbyes that matter we seldom say,

  Being elsewhere – preoccupied, on a visit,

  Somehow off guard – when the dear friend slips away

  Tactfully, for ever. And had we known him

  So near departure, would we have shut our eyes

  To the leaving look in his? tried to detain him

  On the doorstep with bouquets of goodbyes?

  I think of one, so constant a life-enhancer

  That I can hardly yet imagine her dead;

  Who seems, in her Irish courtesy, to answer

  Even now the farewell I left unsaid.

  Remembering her threefold self – a scholar,

  A white witch, a small girl, fused into one –

  Though all the love they lit will never recall her,

  I warm my heart still at her cordial sun.

  2

  There was the small-boned witch who would accost us

  In Notting Hill Gate, white shoes and hairnet on,

  Having just flown out of a dream of Doctor Faustus,

  Vanished from Cambridge or Ceylon,

  Or merely passed intact under the wheels

  Of several buses. And instantly her spells

  Worked on us – we were young, a drab day shone.

  Then the attentive scholar, listening for clues

  To meaning, like a bird with its head inclined

  Earthward: one in whose presence to misuse

  Truth was hazardous – she would find

  You gently out. But her own truth sang and tingled

  With a Mozartian gaiety that mingled

  Wise innocence and pure elegance of mind.

  But I think I loved in her most the original Alice –

  The round blue gaze ready for wonderland,

  The mien, polite, inquisitive, without malice,

  Of one who nevertheless would stand

  No nonsense from cardboard kings or tinpot knights –

  A little girl who reached spectacular heights

  By chewing on whatever came to hand …

  Child, with a scholar’s cool, precise discerning:

  Scholar, unfeigned in her bewitching glee:

  White witch, whose subtle essences were burning

  With a child’s candour. Now all three

  Are in one grave. But still her nature glows

  Through earth and night, and like trefoil there grows

  On us the sweetness of her memory.

  1 E. M. Butler: former Professor of German at Cambridge, and author.

  Edward Elgar