Complete Poems

Complete Poems

by Muriel Spark
Complete Poems

Complete Poems

by Muriel Spark

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Overview

In her foreword to All The Poems(2003) Muriel Spark wrote, '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.' Including previously uncollected work, this new edition demonstrates her ear for the rightness of a line and her eye for the telling detail, her command of poetic forms and her ability to rise to the different challenges of freer verse. Spark's poems are witty, idiosyncratic and haunting, transforming the familiar into glittering moments of strangeness, revealing the dark - and light - music beneath the mundane.

Product Details

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

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.

Read an Excerpt

Complete Poems


By Muriel Spark

Carcanet Press Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Muriel Spark
All 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.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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