Stevie Smith (1902-1971)
One way to understand where poetry is now is to see where it was a hundred years ago. Every Saturday I’ll be posting not the best, but at least the most representative, poems from the last century, where we can see poetry constantly changing. You can read the other entries here.
Stevie Smith at Poetry Foundation & Wiki
Do Take Muriel Out
Do take Muriel out
She is looking so glum
Do take Muriel out
All her friends have gone.
And after too much pressure
Looking for them in the Palace
She goes home to too much leisure
And this is what her life is.
All her friends are gone
And she is alone
And she looks for them where they have never been
And her peace is flown.
Her friends went into the forest
And across the river
And the desert took their footprints
And they went with a believer.
Ah they are gone they were so beautiful
And she can not come to them
And she kneels in her room at night
Crying, Amen.
Do take Muriel out
Although your name is Death
She will not complain
When you dance her over the blasted heath.
Valuable
(After reading two paragraphs in a newspaper)
All these illegitimate babies…
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little cheap things,
Why do you not put some value on yourselves,
Learn to say, No?
Did nobody teach you?
Nobody teaches anybody to say No nowadays,
People should teach people to say No.
O poor panther,
Oh your poor black animal,
At large for a few moments in a school for young children in Paris,
Now in your cage again,
How your great eyes bulge with bewilderment,
There is something there that accuses us,
In your angry and innocent eyes,
Something that says:
I am too valuable to be kept in a cage.
Oh these illegitimate babies!
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little valuable things,
You should have said, No, I am valuable,
And again, It is because I am valuable
I say, No.
Nobody teaches anybody they are valuable nowadays.
Girls, you are valuable,
And you, Panther, you are valuable,
But the girls say: I shall be alone
If I say “I am valuable” and other people do not say it of me,
I shall be alone, there is no comfort there.
No, it is not comforting but it is valuable,
And if everybody says it in the end
It will be comforting. And for the panther too,
If everybody says he is valuable
It will be comforting for him.
Not Waving but Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Away, Melancholy
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.
The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat.
Away, melancholy.
Man, too, hurries,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god,
Pours what he knows of good
Calling good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.
Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God,
Stone of man’s thought, be good ?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man’s good, growing,
By man’s called God.
Away, melancholy, let it go.
Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;
Beaten, corrupted, dying
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
It is his virtue needs explaining,
Not his failing.
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.