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ISBN-13: | 9781784101251 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
Publication date: | 10/15/2015 |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 160 |
File size: | 794 KB |
About the Author
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Complete Poems
By Muriel Spark
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Muriel SparkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78410-125-1
CHAPTER 1
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 jewels 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.
Why did they say 'Good morning'?
Well, I said 'Good morning' back to them,
This in my dream being the right thing to do.
Verlaine Villanelle
Like poor Verlaine, whom God defend,
I see the sky above the roof,
And write my book till summer's end.
When tree, town, bell and birdnote blend,
I feel, since summer sails aloof
Like poor Verlaine, whom God defend,
Who went to jail but did not mend.
I taste the pity sure enough
And write my book till summer's end.
I see a tree, and won't pretend
I'm warped on that nostalgic woof
Like poor Verlaine, whom God defend.
But rue the crooked dividend
These days will yield of galley-proof,
And write my book till summer's end.
Therefore I see the sky and spend
An hour of lyrical reproof,
Like poor Verlaine, whom God defend,
And write my book till summer's end.
Edinburgh Villanelle
These eyes that saw the saturnine
Glance in my back, refused the null
Heart of Midlothian, never mine.
Hostile High Street gave the sign.
Hollyrood made unmerciful
These eyes that saw the saturnine
Watchmen of murky Leith begin
To pump amiss the never-full
Heart of Midlothian, never mine.
Withal they left the North Sea brine
Seeping the slums and did not fool
These eyes that saw the saturnine
Waters no provident whim made wine
Fail to infuriate the dull
Heart of Midlothian, never mine.
Municipal monuments confine
What ghosts return to ridicule
These eyes that saw the saturnine
Heart of Midlothian, never mine.
Holy Water Rondel
For salt, no word seems apposite;
Its common wisdom would defy
All praise, so far as meets the eye,
Salt is so meek a hypocrite.
And not the most selective wit
Has words to measure water by,
Because, so far as meets the eye,
Water is exquisite.
But cited sacerdotally,
Multiple evils up and quit,
Which proves that water and salt commit
Pathetic faults beyond the eye;
And shows a happy flaw whereby
The fabric is bereft of it,
Since there is nothing left of it
But mercies more than meet the eye.
Therefore I rate the creatures high
Whose salt and watery features knit
So strict and strange a composite
Of blessings and of brine thereby.
No wonder that the clergy ply
The people every week with it,
Who are of virtue infinite
So far as meets the eye.
The Creative Writing Class
'There is,' he declared.
'Really?' she grinned.
'Undoubtedly,' he stated.
'Tomorrow,' she burbled.
'A majority,' he chortled.
'The statues?' she enquired.
'Public health,' he opined.
'The signature,' she ventured.
'Miss Universe,' he emoted.
'The confederation,' she growled.
'Hostile ethics!' he exclaimed.
'The Tears of Time,' she choked.
'Everything entire,' he warbled.
'It's a mere obsession,' she roared.
'Develop the wolf,' he demanded.
'Done,' she snarled.
'On with the job,' he guffawed.
'Not unanimous,' she yelled.
'You're breaking my jaw,' he groaned.
'Silence!' she sneered.
Authors' Ghosts
I think that authors' ghosts creep back
Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves
And find the books they wrote.
Those authors put final, semi-final touches,
Sometimes whole paragraphs.
Whole pages are added, re-written, revised,
So deeply by night those authors employ
Themselves with those old books of theirs.
How otherwise
Explain the fact that maybe after years
Have passed, the reader
Picks up the book — But was it like that?
I don't remember this ... Where
Did this ending come from?
I recall quite another.
Oh yes, it has been tampered with
No doubt about it —
The author's very touch is here, there and there,
Where it wasn't before, and
What's more, something's missing —
I could have sworn ...
That Bad Cold
That hand, a tiny one, first at my throat;
That thump in the chest.
I know you of old, you're a bad cold
Come to stay for a few days,
Unwanted visitor — a week perhaps.
Nobody asked him to come. (Yes,
He is masculine, but otherwise
Don't try to parse the situation.)
Everything stops. Perhaps
He is providentially intended to
Make cease and desist an overworking
State of mind. Yes, there is a certain
Respite. Friends mean merely a bed
And a hot drink. Enemies and all
Paranoias, however justified, lose their way
In the fog. And the desk diary
Lies open with a vacant grin.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Complete Poems by Muriel Spark. Copyright © 2015 Muriel Spark. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
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