Complete Poems: Muriel Spark Read online

  COMPLETE POEMS

  Muriel Spark was born in Edinburgh in 1918. After some years living in Africa, she returned to England, where she edited Poetry Review from 1947 to 1949 and published her first volume of poems, The Fanfarlo, in 1952. She eventually made her home in Italy. Her many novels include Memento Mori (1959), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), The Girls of Slender Means (1963), The Abbess of Crewe (1974), A Far Cry from Kensington (1988) and The Finishing School (2004). Her short stories were collected in 1967, 1985 and 2001, and her Collected Poems I appeared in 1967. Dame Muriel was made Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 1996 and awarded her DBE in 1993. She died in Italy on 13 April 2006, at the age of eighty-eight.

  COMPLETE POEMS

  MURIEL SPARK

  with an afterword by

  MICHAEL SCHMIDT

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on This Edition

  Foreword to the 2004 Edition (Muriel Spark)

  A Tour of London

  (c. 1950–51)

  The Dark Music of the Rue du Cherche-Midi

  (2000)

  The Yellow Book

  (c. 1951)

  What?

  (2002)

  Verlaine Villanelle

  (c. 1950)

  Edinburgh Villanelle

  (c. 1950)

  Holy Water Rondel

  (c. 1951)

  The Creative Writing Class

  (2003)

  Authors’ Ghosts

  (2003)

  That Bad Cold

  (2003)

  Leaning Over an Old Wall

  (c. 1947)

  Flower into Animal

  (1949/1950)

  Abroad

  (1984)

  Going Up to Sotheby’s

  (1982)

  On the Lack of Sleep

  (c. 1963)

  The Grave that Time Dug

  (c. 1951)

  The Pearl-Miners

  (c. 1952)

  Omen

  (c. 1949)

  My Kingdom for a Horse

  (c. 1956)

  Intermittence

  (c. 1956)

  Letters

  (2003)

  Holidays 30

  (2002)

  Facts

  (2003)

  Complaint in a Wash-out Season

  (c. 1959)

  Litany of Time Past

  (c. 1959)

  The Fall

  (c. 1943)

  Faith and Works

  (c. 1957)

  Conundrum

  (c. 1952)

  The Messengers

  (c. 1967)

  Fruitless Fable

  (c. 1948)

  Note by the Wayside

  (c. 1965)

  Mungo Bays the Moon

  (1996)

  Panickings

  (2003)

  The Hospital

  (2003)

  The Empty Space

  (2002)

  Hats

  (2003)

  Anger in the Works

  (1995)

  Dimmed-Up

  (2002)

  While Flicking Over the Pages

  (1995)

  Standing in the Field

  (1994)

  To the Gods of My Right Hand

  (c. 1954)

  That Lonely Shoe Lying on the Road

  (1993)

  The Victoria Falls

  (c. 1948)

  Conversation Piece

  (c. 1954)

  Elementary

  (c. 1951)

  Against the Transcendentalists

  (c. 1952)

  Shipton-under-Wychwood

  (c. 1950)

  Conversations

  (c. 1965)

  The Card Party

  (c. 1951–52)

  Chrysalis

  (c. 1951)

  Elegy in a Kensington Churchyard

  (c. 1949)

  Evelyn Cavallo

  (c. 1952)

  The Rout

  (c. 1951)

  Four People in a Neglected Garden

  (c. 1951)

  Like Africa

  (c. 1948)

  We Were Not Expecting the Prince To-day

  (c. 1947)

  Communication

  (c. 1955)

  Created and Abandoned

  (c. 1979)

  The Goose

  (c. 1960)

  A Visit

  (c. 1950)

  Bluebell among the Sables

  (c. 1958)

  Industriad

  (c. 1951)

  Canaan

  (c. 1952)

  The Nativity

  (c. 1950)

  The Three Kings

  (c. 1953)

  Sisera

  (c. 1953)

  Report on an Interrogation

  (2006)

  Family Rose

  (1948)

  Nothing to Do

  (2004)

  Is This the Place?

  (2004)

  So near to Home

  (2005)

  Oh, So So

  (2004)

  The Man Who Came to Dinner

  (2004)

  Everything plus the Kitchen Sink

  (2004)

  The Ballad of the Fanfarlo

  (c. 1951)

  From the Latin

  Persicos Odi

  (c. 1949)

  To Lucius Sestius in the Spring

  (c. 1949)

  Winter Poem

  (c. 1949)

  Prologue and Epilogue

  (c. 1949)

  Afterword by Michael Schmidt

  Index of Titles and First Lines

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgements are made to the editors and publishers of the magazines and newspapers in which these poems first appeared.

  The following poems first appeared in The New Yorker: ‘Conversation Piece’, ‘The Dark Music of the Rue du Cherche-Midi’, ‘Edinburgh Villanelle’, ‘The Messengers’, ‘Canaan’, ‘The Card Party’, ‘Created and Abandoned’, ‘The Empty Space’, ‘Holidays’, ‘Mungo Bays the Moon’, ‘That Bad Cold’ and ‘The Lonely Shoe Lying in the Road’. Others appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Sophisticated Traveler, Penguin New Writing No. 15, Poetry Quarterly, Scotland on Sunday, The Scotsman, Tatler, and World Literature Today. ‘Report on an Interrogation’ was first published in the UK in the Times Literary Supplement, 24 February 2006; ‘Family Rose’ was first published in the UK in Tatler, January 2007; ‘Nothing to Do’ and ‘Is This the Place?’ were first published in the UK in the Spectator, December 2004; ‘So near to Home’ was first published in the UK in the Spectator, December 2005. ‘Everything Plus the Kitchen Sink’ was first published in the UK in 2004 by Rees & O’Neill. ‘Oh, So So’ and ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’ are previously unpublished.

  A NOTE ON THIS EDITION

  The order of poems in the 2004 edition, All the Poems, has been preserved, and eight poems added: ‘Report on an Interrogation’, ‘Family Rose’, ‘Nothing to Do’, ‘Is This the Place?’, ‘So near to Home’, ‘Oh, So So’, ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’, and ‘Everything plus the Kitchen Sink’.

  FOREWORD TO THE 2004 EDITION

  The poems in this book were composed throughout my literary life, from the late 1940s to the present day.

  My editor, Barbara Epler (who, for wisdom, charm, humour and intuition, must be the envy of every author), has here rearranged my poems in an order which, I think, gives more coherence and novelty to a work than would a chronological arrangement. I feel that my poems, like some of my memories, come together in a manner entirely involuntary and unforeseen.

  As fa
r as chronology is concerned, I have no exact records and dates. In my early days I often had to wait years for the eventual publication of a piece of creative work. Some of these poems were written from the late-forties onward, although not published until later. In the list of contents I have tried to indicate by the useful ‘c.’ the year to which I think the poems belong.

  Once, when I went to visit a beloved friend, the poet W. H. Auden, I found him ‘touching up’ his earlier poetry. He told me that he had been unfavourably criticized for this habit, but he felt justified in making the changes because he understood, now in his mature years, what he had really meant but failed to express precisely, when he was young.

  I thought of this when I looked through my poems. In some cases I was not even sure what I meant at the time. Fifty years ago, in some senses, I was a different person. And yet, I can’t disapprove of those poems whose significance and origins I forget. Edinburgh Villanelle for instance: what did I mean by ‘Heart of Midlothian, never mine.’? There is a spot outside St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, my native city, which marks the ‘Heart of Midlothian’. I have fond memories of Edinburgh. My pivotal book, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was a novel about Edinburgh. I have no idea what I meant by the words in the poem, ‘never mine’, and yet I meant them at the time. And I have let them rest as they are, along with other unfathomable lines.

  Although most of my life has been devoted to fiction, I have always thought of myself as a poet. I do not write ‘poetic’ prose, but feel that my outlook on life and my perceptions of events are those of a poet. Whether in prose or verse, all creative writing is mysteriously connected with music and I always hope this factor is apparent throughout my work.

  Long ago, I studied verse-forms in detail, and attempted to practise them. Not all were in my view successful enough to be offered in the present volume. But I can state my conviction that, for creative writing of any sort, an early apprenticeship as a poet is a wonderful stimulant and start.

  Muriel Spark

  Tuscany, 2003

  COMPLETE POEMS

  A Tour of London

  I. DAYBREAK COMPOSITION

  Anyone in this top-floor flat

  This morning, might look out upon

  An oblong canvas of Kensington

  Almost ready for looking at.

  Houses lean sideways to the light;

  At foreground left, a crowd of trees

  Is blue, is a footman, his gloves are white.

  The sky’s a pair of legs, top-right,

  The colour of threadbare dungarees.

  All the discrepant churches grind

  Four, and in the window frame is

  Picasso at least, his scene; its name is

  Morning; authentic, but never signed.

  II. KENSINGTON GARDENS

  Old ladies and tulips, model boats,

  Compact babies, mobile mothers,

  Distant buses like parakeets,

  Lonely men with mackintoshes

  Over their arms—where do they go?

  Where come from? now that summer’s

  Paraphernalia and splash is

  Out, as if planted a year ago.

  III. WHAT THE STRANGER WONDERED

  Where does she come from

  Sipping coffee alone in London?

  The shoes, the hair—I do not think

  She has anything in the bank.

  Has she a man, where is he then,

  Why is she sitting at half-past ten

  Reading a book alone in London?

  Where does the money come from

  That lets her be alone and sipping

  Not with a man, not in a job, not with a dog

  to the grocer tripping?

  IV. DAY OF REST

  The clock knocked off at quarter to three

  And sat there yawning with arms stretched wide,

  And it was set going again by nobody,

  It being Sunday and we being occupied.

  Therefore the day happened and disappeared,

  But whether the time we kept was appropriate

  To rend, to sew, to love, to hate,

  No one could say for certain; all that occurred

  Was Sunday, London, bells, talk, fate.

  V. SUBURB

  It is the market clock that moonish glows.

  Where two hands point, two poplars interlock.

  Night’s verities knock

  Normal perspectives comatose,

  Proving the moon a market clock,

  The trees, time’s laughing-stock.

  VI. THE HOUSE

  Their last look round was happening when

  The bus pulled up outside.

  Nothing burning? Windows tried?

  The lights go on and off again

  And they are satisfied,

  And we already starting off—

  But see the house, how curious,

  The lights again! and sure enough,

  Feeling the catch behind the curtain

  A hand—just to make certain.

  VII. MAN IN THE STREET

  Last thing at night and only one

  Man in the street,

  And even he was gone complete

  Into an absence as he stood

  Beside the lamplight longitude.

  He stood so long and still, it would

  Take men in longer streets to find

  What this was chewing in his mind.

  The Dark Music of the Rue du Cherche-Midi

  If you should ask me, is there a street of Europe,

  and where, and what, is that ultimate street?

  I would answer: the one-time Roman road

  in Paris, on the left bank of the river,

  the long, long Rue du Cherche-Midi,

  street of my thoughts and afterthoughts

  and curiosity never to be satisfied entirely, and

  premonitions, inconceivably shaped, and memories.

  Suppose that I looked for the street of my life, where I always

  could find an analogy. There in the

  shop-front windows and in the courtyards,

  the alleys, the great doorways, old convents, baronial properties:

  those of the past. And new

  hotels of the present, junk shops, bead shops,

  pastry cooks, subtle chocolate-makers, florists of intricate

  wonder, and merchants of exceptional fabrics.

  Suppose that I looked, I would choose to

  find that long, long Rue, of Paris, du Cherche-Midi, its buildings,

  they say, so tall they block out the

  sun. I have always thought it worth

  the chase and the search to find some sort of meridian.

  From 1662 to the Revolution:

  No. 7, owned in 1661 by

  Jérémie Derval, financier, counsellor,

  and master of the king’s household.

  All along the street:

  Marquises, dukes, duchesses,

  financiers, mathematicians, magistrates,

  philosophers, bibliophiles, prioresses,

  abbesses, princes and, after them,

  their widows, generals, ambassadors,

  politicians. Some

  were beheaded and others took over. In essence

  none has departed. No. 38:

  there was the military prison where Dreyfus

  first stood trial, in December, 1894.

  At No. 40 resided the Comte de Rochambeau until

  he was sent to help George Washington;

  he forced the English to surrender at Yorktown and took

  twenty-two flags from them. What a street, the Rue du Cherche-Midi!

  Here, Nos. 23–31, was a convent where a famous abbess reigned,

  disgusted in girlhood by her father, a lecher,

  she imposed a puritan rule and was admired,

  especially when, great lady that she was,

  she humbled herself to wash the dishes.

  Beads and je
wels of long ago look out

  from their dark shopwindows

  like blackberries in a wayside bramble bush

  holding out their arms:

  Take me, pick me, I am dark and sweet,

  ripe and moist with life.

  The haggard young girl in charge of the boutique

  reaches for the beads, she fondles them, sad, sad,

  to part with such a small but

  undeniable treasure. Rose quartz:

  she sells it with eager reluctance.

  Listen to my music. Hear it.

  Raindrops, each dark note.

  She has not slept well. Her little

  black dress was hastily donned, and the half-

  circles are drooping under her eyes.

  They say the Rue du Cherche-Midi,

  with its tall houses set at shadowy angles,

  never catches the sun.

  Still, in the shop, that

  raddled, dignified young girl—

  frugal, stylish,

  experienced—will, with bony fingers,

  pick out a pile of necklaces:

  the very one that you want, those

  opals, those moonstones.

  Dark boutiques, concerns; their shadow falls

  over the bright appointments of the day.

  It is a long, long past that haunts the street of Europe,

  a spirit of vast endurance,

  a certain music, Rue du Cherche-Midi.

  The Yellow Book

  They did not intend to distinguish between the essence

  Of wit and wallpaper trellis. What they cared

  Was how the appointments of the age appeared

  Under the citron gaslight incandescence.

  Virtue was vulgar, sin a floral passion

  And death a hansom at the door, while they

  Kept faith with a pomaded sense of history

  In their fashion.

  Behind the domino, those fringed and fanned

  Exclusive girls, prinked with the peacock’s eye

  Noted, they believed, the trickle of a century

  Like a thin umbrella in a black-gloved hand.

  What?

  A black velvet embroidered handbag full of medium-size carrots

  All of which said ‘Good morning’ in one voice.

  What does the dream mean?

  The black velvet is death; and the embroidery?

  Oh, I daresay, a fancy funeral.

  The carrots are sex, plenty of them.