‘All is not lost.’
April, 1942
Black out the world, Shakespeare’s in a grave,
And Dickens-heart-by Thames, and summer-full Chaucer;
War’s in his heaven, sorrow in exelsis, lovers asunder –
Nought but a grudging spring
Have we this day and Chaucer who says it best:
‘The slayer of himself yet saw I there,
His herte-blood had bathed all his hair:
The nayl y-driven in the skull at night;
The colde death, with mouth gayping upright.
In midst of all the temple sat meschaunce,
With sory comfort and evil countynaune.
Ther I saw madness laughying in his rage,
Armed complaint, alarm and fierce outrage.
The body in the bushe, with throte y-bled,
A thousand slayne, and none of sickness dead;
The tiraunt, with the prey bi-force y-refte;
Ther burnt the shippes daunsying up and down;
Ther dyed the hunter by the wilde lion:
The sow eating the child right in the cradle;
The cook y-skalded, for all his longe ladel.
Nought was forgot the ill-fortune of Mart:
The carter over-ridden by his cart,
Under the wheel full lowe he lay adoun.’
To the wars he was a hole packed of years, Dan Chaucer.
Saturday Night in ‘The Golden Lion’
For Nina Hamnett
Fine as a fresco the face stands out,
Six-deep, ten-deep faces exactly framing it each side –
A beer and a broad smile –
Pallor mated with darkness. Is it Slav or is it Latin?
The beret tops the whole, surnage la compagnie.
Six foot something, beautiful face, framed with profiles.
Cettinje? Cross of Australasia? Would a scientist know?
(God, what a world it can all be when…but no, it’s not time yet.)
Beer and a broad smile (How simple it all is, when it is.)
This man has the physique of what I mean when I say: comrade,
And, possibly, the heart.
A hand comes up to affirm the bon bock.
So that’s the kind of hand it is, is it – hence the kind of man,
A working hand, untroubled with equivocations;
Tells me ‘One does what one has to do’,
And ‘What one’s going to do.’
I wasn’t thinking I’d ever see that face again,
And then, a month later, in the same place:
‘I am a Red Indian’, he said, ‘Red Indian from Canada.’
There you are Britain, there’s our today of Allies.
October-November Night in ‘The Coach & Horses’
Coal fires – autumn, bedamn, is it, with the leaves down?
You wouldn’t have noticed it, no, we’re so all of a piece here now
with time and the way things are and the weather,
In the desert of waiting.
Fetch a sigh an’ you will – the radio bubbles on:
‘America’s expenditure’ – what’s yours? what’s mine?
Mine’s income tax – what’s yours?
And here’s your heartache in the corner where it’s always been.
Who are you talking to? Myself of course,
Yet the time of vacant shuttles weave the wind is dead
(And wasn’t it long, and true?)
Here’s a coal for the fire – and fire in the coal, bedamn.
That cuts both ways…No, that cuts four ways…
What does? I’ve forgotten. You’d better forget it. Drunk again?
Not so’s you’d notice. Here’s the pep talk on.
As it proceeds I hear a different strain:
‘Black troops aren’t allies, are subjects,
An’ a subjec’, he pushes a wheel; he can’ draw up no report –’
‘What you talkin’ about buddy?’
‘De British black man’s an ally, Dis war make it so.
De British black folks claims deir British rights, and though
Plenty British say his wrong, plenty more say it right be so.’
Sounds like a pub-full of people –
Of course it does – that’s exactly what I am;
That is, part of me is.
And all in all, murk, black-out conquers nerves?
And all in all, who’s best off, Europe or you?
And by and large, the muddlers’ll muddle through?
Expect they will, old man.
Waiting, waiting, waiting – oh waiting.
And then, OH THEN, it bursts, in North Africa,
It begins to come true.
Of a Glass Stopper Found in the Sea
at Collioure S.W. France, in 1951
To Valentine Ackland, with the stopper
How old is this glass stopper, tunred
Into that something ripe and strange
By wave and sand in their sea-change,
Their velvet wash upon Collioure,
While time crept on five hundred years,
Or flamed in one decade of wars
(My own scored there by Spanish tears)?
Gods of those seas might know, won’t tell,
No arrogant unborn be sure.
Pisces Pulled Plough
(Hardest of all in the arduous February days)
‘Tired? No, exhausted, but far more indignant still,
We the two Fishes’ (they said) ‘That were wont to fill her sea –
Mistress, she yoked us like oxen to till her plot…
Her plot? Her acre – from morn till dark, and we
Thinking all done this-one-more appalling day,
Ready to sink and pant ourselves to sleep,
‘How now?… My midnight whip! Bestir!’ quoth she…
All morn, all afternoon t’was ‘A-AA and ARRR-RE –’
How hard, how hard to the task – yet patient – she.
Damn! From her sea she took us, blew in our faces,
Now patted, now tanned our hides, and with her stick
Pointed at stones in the path, and counted the stones
And made her a pyramid, and we the while
Wretchedly, patiently went, constrained like a pair
Of oxen, bueyes, boves, fished from our zones
Of roach, dace, bream, skate, tench – does a minnow spin?
Must Ashanti’s Cat-Fish read?
Nothing but computations!
Madame is in her smock like some grand bouvier
With a whip (how gladly… ha!… t’would encircle the nations:
‘Come here, go there’ could it but). And even the sun,
And even the spring of a 3-in-the-afternoon,
Banging all hammer-made to get into the room…
‘No, no, not now…’ You’d have thought she was stitching a doom:
‘The plot must be squared, and sown, and finished’ quoth she.
With her wine she made us dizzy, yet worse with fatigue…
Our customary hither-and-yon? Subjected to discipline!
‘Up from the Fen, ye sluggards’ – thus quoth she,
‘Get thee to school by an Emmet, Shakespeare said;
The tiny Ant, and the Warrior, and also the Bee,
The Wasp and the Hornet labour: and so do we;
On, little team, on, on!’ At this we went
Pele mele in fury, fin over tip, half-drowned
Pashing through oozy clumps, traipsing that bloody plough;
Now pale, now puce were we, snuffling ‘revenge’,
Rambunctious and tougher than ever, puffing scorn
At one who sets a pen where tis not meant
To assay another’s art – Tom’s dagger on wood,
Bill’s blade on marble – ‘This prose must be exact!’
No no! Such yokes are jokes – we Fishes said.
‘I shall do this aga
in, however’ – we heard –
‘In the fullest plenitude of doubt, no doubt;
Agreed: tis not US, this acre, not for us three,
Yet on, on, on!’
At last she let us go;
We found the watery shadows on the wall
And flung ourselves therein on the scud of a curse.
Mistress, she took our work; with the point of a pin
She pricked some more, alone, and swilled her fill
Of those ‘midnight oils’ – pah! – slept. Then a whisper swam
Down the nervous current – ha! – of ‘the vasty deep’:
‘To our dallying way again – arise and come
Back to our Cupe and Tongues – the acre is done!’
‘Come, Liberating Wine!’
Come, liberating wine, up to the brim,
And ease the knots of time, that I may see
Something within the nod of destiny,
Dark, clear, or slow, or swift, or sharp or dim,
Looking not deep, not long, such may not be
With safety done, yet surely, rapidly.
Ay, he who talks too much may miss his road,
He who talks ill will surely lose his load,
And he who thinks and thinks and never speaks –
Poor carl – knows all too well now the heart breaks
Against the silent rocks, tou-te la vie.
Out of the wine what’s possible may come true;
And that’s not said alone for me and you,
For all tis said who drin the wine, pardie.
Oath – History Repeats
‘By the black blood out of the mouth of God,
In time of waiting, man, do what you can!’
So run the words, and ay, for ever ran
Since half was lost and half put under sod.
From Prison
The doors will open and the gate swing wide,
With all God’s music right by thy side,
And in the drapes of the evening breeze,
Wilt find thy love and gain thine ease,
My honey-lamb, my darling.
You
To Steve
‘I am that mystery that men call: the brain;
And I am tall and real, a heady truth;
My inspiration is nor age nor youth
But splicing of the hand and mind. Again,
I am the slant shaft angling for response,
The laugh in the honey seen against the sun;
Yet more, the full of shade when day is done –
Dawn am I not (love’s enemy). And once
The tide of China shocked with Afric’s blood
In me. I am the majesty of this,
The skull, the form, the all that holds the kiss
For you, against the time of fullest flood.
I am the rage, the temper of the hour,
The sapient waiting soil that is man’s floor.’
Notes to the Poems
Outlaws
‘If the End Be Now?…’ first appeared in The English Review, September 1920, pp. 195–197. Nancy is credited as ‘Nancy Fairbairn’, her married name.
‘Wheels’ first appeared in Wheels: An Anthology of Verse, ed. Edith Sitwell (Oxford: Blackwell, 1916).
‘Zeppelins’ appears in Wheels as ‘Destruction’ with the following changes. Line 6 reads ‘poorer, humbler, houses’ and the final line reads ‘To mock Death – laughing at their bitter pain.’
‘Sonnet’ first appeared in Wheels but with this final couplet: ‘But Death has beaten him, and takes the pride / From the strong hands that held us till we died.’
‘Promise’ was published in Wheels as ‘The Carnivals of Peace’ and appears in Outlaws with a few minor changes. The most significant of these is the replacement of ‘barren’ with ‘troubled’ in the line 4.
‘Mood’ appears in Wheels as ‘From the Train’. NC dates the poem 1915 in her manuscripts and states that it also appeared ‘in one of the London reviews’.
‘Prayer’ first appeared in The Eton College Chronicle in 1915 and in The New Age (under her married name Nancy Fairbairn) November 1918, Volume 24, Issue 1.
‘Answer to a Reproof’ first appeared in The English Review as ‘In Answer to a Reproof’, October 1919, pp. 292–293.
Sublunary
NC’s annotated manuscript of poems from Sublunary indicates places and dates of composition, as well as any previous publications. These are: ‘In a Café’: ‘In a café at Pereigeux, or Limoges, Spring, 1921.’ According to NC this poem and ‘Eusebius Doubts’ were published together in The Observer, London, 12 June 1921. ‘Eusebius Doubts’: ‘In a café in Cahors, Spring 1921.’ ‘Iris of Memories’ refers to NC’s childhood friend, the poet, actress, playwright and artist’s model Iris Tree (1897–1968). Tree was the daughter of Sir Herbert Beerbohm, actor and theatre manager. Cunard and Tree’s friendship was significant during NC’s youth and they lived together briefly in London and travelled to Paris. Her poems appeared in Poetry Review, The New Age, The Athenaeum, Poetry and several other publications during the 1920s and 30s. Her collection The Traveller and Other Poems appeared in 1927. For more on Tree’s life see Daphne Fielding’s The Rainbow Picnic: A Portrait of Iris Tree (1974). ‘Memory at the Fair’ comp. 1920, pub. The Observer, 9 July 1922. ‘Bottles, Mirrors and Alchemy’: ‘1920 or later?’. ‘Sonnet’ (‘Not till the fruit is gold upon the tree’) comp. Provence, c. Autumn 1921, pub. The Saturday Review, 2 September 1922). ‘At Les Baux’ comp. 1921, pub. The Observer, 11 December 1921. ‘To Vaucluse Came Petrarch and Laura’ comp. Provence, Autumn 1921, pub. The Observer, 7 December 7 1922. ‘Saintes Maries-De-La-Mer’ comp. 1921. ‘The Night in Avignon’ comp. 1921. ‘Red Earth, Pale Olive, Fragmentary Vine’ and ‘Pale Moon, Slip of Malachite’ (comp. 1921) were condensed by NC into one poem of two numbered parts entitled ‘Mediterranean – From the Var’ in her Bodleian /Augustan Manuscript (1944). ‘The Solitary’ comp. c. 1921, pub. The New Statesman, 28 Oct 1922. ‘Toulonnaise’ is very likely a reference to NC’s first governess who was from Toulon. ‘Allegory’ comp. Summer 1922 at The Mill House, Hungerford, pub. The Saturday Review, 6 Jan 1923. NC notes that ‘this number of the Review was reproduced in miniature for the Queen’s Doll’s House designed by Lutyens.’ ‘From Afar’ comp. c. 1919–1920. ‘What If the Bell Is Loud?’ comp. Winter 1921, Sanary, Var, pub. The Saturday Review, 1 July 1922. ‘You Have Lit the Only Candle’ comp. Autumn 1921, Sanary, Var, pub. The Saturday Review, 20 May 1921; ‘come’ is corrected to ‘comes’ in line 10. ‘I Think of You’ appears as ‘In the Fields’ in one of NC’s manuscripts; comp. Summer 1922 at The Mill House, Hungerford, pub. The Saturday Review, 22 July 1922. ‘At Fuenterrabia in Spain’ comp. September 1922, Hendaye, France, pub. The Saturday Review, 28 October 1922. ‘To the Eiffel Tower Restaurant’ comp. date unknown. In a letter dated 12 August 1957 from NC to the American academic and biographer of Ronald Firbank, Miriam Benkovitz, she writes: ‘Alas the Eiffel Tower Restaurant, such a venue from 1914 or so till… yes, till when? Till the mid-thirties… should be “gone”. I wish you could have had a glimpse of it, or indeed that we could have dinner there, you and I, as it was then. The place still exists geographically: 1 Percy street, facing the gloomy length of Charlotte Street which ends by becoming Fitzroy Street and runs into that square. Maybe you might care to see it. It is now called “The White Tower”, Greek, and very expensive I think. I was taken there to dinner during the war by Cyril Connolly, who, in the Wyndham Lewis room upstairs, after having insisted on a regular “champagne dinner”, confessed to me with gusto that he was a SNOB. He said he really, but really, did get more pleasure out of being with a duchess (any duchess) than with…Picasso. Quelle candeur. I have not been there since. The room downstairs was entirely changed and all those huge brass pots and palms, behind which one sometimes sheltered or had the illusion of so doing, had long gone. Surely this place was the only one in London that concentrated, somehow, the English and continen
tal essence of “avant-garde”, and art, and bohemianism. Stulik, the Austrian patron, made masses of money, but he lost yet more through being kind, and through being drunk, and through family upsets, permanently. What he would not have had to tell you about Ronald – and in such vivid ways and words…’ (Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Nancy Cunard Collection GEN MSS 438 box 1, folder 2.) ‘I Am Not One For Expression’ comp. Summer 1922 at The Mill House, Hungerford, pub. The New Statesman, 16 December 1922.
NC’s manuscript also includes a typed page that quotes a letter from George Moore of 21 Jan 1922 regarding Sublunary: ‘I am writing to you with delight, for I know that your Poems mean a great deal to you, and I don’t mean to stint my praise of them; for there is conviction in my heart of improvement. [NC’s hand, in pencil: In Sublunary] you have succeeded in conveying an atmosphere of midnight mystery and the awed desire of the disciples to obtain some knowledge of things occult from the wizard. This poem is, whether by design or accident, an endeavour to create something outside yourself. You know my beliefs – that art cannot be altogether subjective, that even the most subjective poems, the most personal to the poet, must be recreated to some extent, and the example I like to give of this necessary objectification is: Lines written in dejection near Naples, Shelley. I think you showed me the poem I admire at Martin-Eglise, but in a less perfect state than it is at present. To make the poem a striking success you should still go over it. I accept, and with delight, the deliberate obscurities of Morris, The Blue Closet, for example, but your obscurities are not deliberate – they rise from pale or weak thinking, uncertain vision […]’ Moore continues by arguing that certain lines be ‘re-forged’ or ‘re-cast’, paraphrasing her poems and finding a new meaning for the rest of ‘Horns in the Valley’: ‘It seems to me, Nancy, that we have now had enough of the Opera, and that the next verses should tell your belief that the evocative horns are not real horns inasmuch as the love-adventure of Tristan and Isolda is not in a single brief moment in time, but an immortal moment carried on through eternity which in certain moods is audible to us.’ (Nancy Cunard Papers, Harry Ransom Center, box 2, folder 9.)
Selected Poems Page 24
