Complete Poems: Muriel Spark by Muriel Spark
And all his nature’s latitude
Gives measure of the simile.
His light, his stars, his hemisphere
Blaze like a tropic, and immense
The moon and leopard stride his blood
And mark in him their opulence.
In him the muffled drums of forests
Inform like dreams, and manifold
Lynx, eagle, thorn, effect about him
Their very night and emerald.
And like a river his Zambesi
Gathers the swell of seasons’ rains,
The islands rocking on his breast,
The orchid open in his loins.
He is like Africa and even
The dangerous chances of his mind
Resemble the precipice whereover
Perpetual waterfalls descend.
We Were Not Expecting the Prince To-day
As stated above, we were not expecting . . .
All the same, you had better show him the sleeping
Beauty upstairs with her powder still intact,
While the whole court on sentry duty, believe it,
Propped in their wigs a century exact,
Deplore her blunder, or rather, misconceive it.
And you had better and better deliver
The bat from her tresses, dispose for a kiss
That bluff on her webby mouth, for suppose he should call it,
And give her a nudge, and she takes the hint, and this
Beauty be a cloud of powder over her pallet?
Communication
Seeing them in that semi-exclusive place
One would have thought the couple perfectly suited;
She with a spherical, he with a conical face;
He a tubular outline; she, fluted.
So it came as a surprise to the listener-in,
And later, to recall, a diversion,
To find them versed in symbols, but alas, tuning in
Each the wrong wavelength to a foreign station.
Take for instance his observation, ‘I deplore
The present indiscriminate bankruptcy
Of flesh, time’s daylight robbery.
I’m sure it has not been permitted before.’
Interrupted, however, by her statement, ‘I
Shall try to get hold of seats for tomorrow and
See the robbers passing by:
A chance in a lifetime I understand.’
Created and Abandoned
Where have you gone, how has it ended with you,
people of my dreams, cut off in mid-life, gone to what grave?
It’s all right for me. I’m fine. I always woke up when we parted
and saw it was only a dream. I took up my life
as I left it the day before. But you?—
like people with bound feet, or people not properly formed,
without further scope, handicapped. Sometimes I never knew
what you were going to say, didn’t let you speak, but woke.
You being unreal after all, this means unwell. I worry about you.
Did something not happen to you after my waking?
Did something next not happen? Or are you
limbo’d there where I left you forever like characters
in a story one has started to write and set aside?
However bad-mannered you were, however amazing
in your style, I hope you’re not looking for me
night after night, not waiting for me to come back.
I feel a definite responsibility for your welfare.
Are you all right?
The Goose
Do you want to know why I am alive today?
I will tell you.
Early on, during the food-shortage,
Some of us were miraculously presented
Each with a goose that laid a golden egg.
Myself, I killed the cackling thing and I ate it.
Alas, many and many of the other recipients
Died of gold-dust poisoning.
A Visit
Sit in a chair.
Calm yourself in front of the fire
Because you have just arrived from a tour
Of No-Man’s land.
No-Man took you by the hand.
No-Man showed you into a room
At the top of a tall emporium.
Nothing there
But a steel chair.
Nothing in it
But a filing cabinet.
And the steel chair said, ‘How do you do
I sent for you.
Meet my Cabinet
I was just going to reshuffle it.’
And he opened a drawer and reshuffled it.
Then said, ‘Bring in
The dancing girl.’ All shimmering
Came she dancing, breasts bare,
She had electric in her hair
Which gave you a shock.
Each breast was an alarm clock.
One was set at ten to two,
The other at a quarter past,
And you couldn’t say which of them was slow
Or which of them was fast.
‘Meet this lady’, said the steel chair.
‘Notice her lever movements, dear.
You know she is a social improvement
Newly devised,
The first resistance movement
To be officially recognised.
Necessary to the race
At any time in any place;
Observe her charming contours ticking round
Because the hour is at hand.’
‘Which is the hour?’ you certainly said,
‘On the left or on the right?’
‘Ah,’ said the girl, ‘I can’t decide,
But the alarm’s not set tonight.’
‘That’s all for now,’ said the steel chair,
‘Show the gentleman out, my dear.’
Bluebell among the Sables
The visitor came clothed with sables,
My dark and social friend.
The afternoon prospered after its kind
But they bore me, those intimate parliaments,
Those tea-times wear my heart away.
So I took half my pleasure in the sables
That flowed across her arm, the chair, the floor,
Sleek and fathomless like contemplative,
Living animals, the deep elect,
In ceremonious most limp obedience.
But the dark skins did move, she felt them creep:
‘My God! My sables!’
Indeed they were alive with a new life,
The sombre swiftly shot with quick and silver
Fur within fur. It was Bluebell, my beautiful,
My small and little cat pounding the sables.
Flat on her spine she tumbled them,
Shaking their kindly tails between her teeth.
‘My furs! Your cat!’ . . .
I said, ‘No need for alarm;
Those dead pelts can’t cause Bluebell any harm.’
Poor soul, this put her in the wrong;
As one who somehow fails the higher vision,
She was meek: ‘They cost the earth, my furs.’
I stroked the comical creature, she the sables,
And all came even.
For she said there was no damage, no damage.
It may be she had profit of the event;
As for myself that moment was well spent
When I saw Bluebell pummelling the sables.
I have the image, the gratuitous image
Miserly seized: of sable wonders glowing,
An order of the profound earth, of roots
And minerals evolved in civil strands,
Defined in which, the sprite, like air and like
A dawn asperges, green-eyed Bluebell plying
The sensuous fabric with her shining pads.
Industriad
There was some difficulty at firs
On the part of a nervous party who wanted to say
Something he couldn’t recall; the Adult Education
Book had said it, that thing he wanted to say.
The managerial conference debate
Went on two hours like this until, slow
And tolerant, Piper got up to democrate,
With a university training behind him thirty years ago.
The face and form harmoniously convex.
He would, of course, say something statesmanlike,
Memorable. Piper was not sure
How to begin till a heavensent inspiration like
A splinter seemed to fly out of the floor:
‘The human situation is becoming increasingly complex.’
In the car that night on the way to Sadler’s Wells,
When he told his wife ‘The human situation is
Becoming increasingly complex’, she thought her marriage
Well worth it, the way he put things in nutshells.
Canaan
She is committed to earth, and the earth
Is plighted forever to her.
The wilderness is prone to her.
The hopeful race of all the earth is
Betrothed to her, pleasant ground of expectation,
Lambent country of Canaan.
Jordan heaved his banks away.
Jordan’s valley bubbled over
High between those opposites.
He rose by night; he dipped by day.
He dipped down for the hosts of the wilderness
And for the silver country of Canaan.
The men of the wilderness at Jordan’s ford
Lifted the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders.
Jordan fled for all his worth.
Jordan-bed lay smitten to dry boulders.
The wilderness bore the Ark of the Lord
Of all the earth
Into the holy country of Canaan.
Canaan’s the land where the wilderness landed.
Therefore I am not altogether confounded
Still to discover a wilderness in her.
Jordan shed his ways, lifted up the river;
Canaan’s husbanded
Now with a ploughing sword, she is anointed
With burning torrents, bridal country,
Canaan of loss.
There goes the leviathan in his glory;
But here dissembles that wilderness. Fowl and beast
Have no more wonderful identity.
The tribes of the pomegranates and the tribes of the yeast,
The families of rubies and the families of grass
Are one to another as waste and waste
In the arms of Canaan of silver dross.
But I am not altogether confounded
That so immanent and green and promised a land
Confounds me with seeming not what she seemed;
Seeing the hopeful race is covenanted
Not less to Canaan
Than Canaan to her promised wilderness,
Seeing default of the double covenant, seeing
Treachery to the warm harvest, no gathering in
Of the pearly vines of Canaan.
The same thing over and over again.
In this I am not altogether bewildered.
No year is twice the same, nor has occurred
Before. We bandy by the name of grief,
Grief which is like no other. Not a leaf
Repeats itself, we only repeat the word.
January, as usual, frigid. As before,
A silent stir in February. More
Of a stir in March. Activity
In April, as previously.
May, as usual, abundant. As before,
A superfluity in June. Greenery galore
Thereafter as always. The season exults.
But never the same reason warily
Secretes the same petal from the same
Pod of a single bud. The circumstances are
Everywhere novel. The results
Only appear similar.
Time lacks experience. Therefore I am not quite
Confounded by history,
Being of the hopeful race of the earth,
Promised to promise, a mystery to mystery,
By which I am not altogether mystified,
Since she is plighted to me, a wilderness, and I to
The silver country of Canaan.
The Nativity
I. THE CONVERSATION OF THE THREE WISE MEN
‘Wind and slobber,’ said the Flate, ‘my words are
Slobber and wind whether I meet with another
Flate or no. I say there is no other.
And I say what only another Flate can gather.
Either way, what I say is air and water.’
The Droom said, ‘You’re a sly one:
I was given to understand you were a Droom.
Look at your lips hewn out of sallow amber.
Look at your funny head all amethyst-encrusted,
Cut square. I should have known there is
No other Droom on earth. No one’s to be trusted.’
‘I’, said the Aspontal, ‘began to realise
We could hope only to be useful to each other
That time we three were looking at maps and
Plotting the journey together. We had to devise
Some reason for coming, and started saying ‘brother’
To each other. Don’t brother me please in future,
You with the square head and you with the eyes
Inside your ears, for I never really
Believed you were Aspontals. However,
We’ve got to follow the star.
We’ve got to be three.
We’ve got to be wise.
Till heaven and earth pass
One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass.’
II. THE CONVERSATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
The Gladanka was saying, ‘If a ewe gives
A dead lamb and you kick her three times thrice
In the face before sunset how many suns will
Rise before her blood stinks?’ And the
Weezabaw laughed, rubbing his corns with a stone.
And the Shorket said, ‘Sod the riddle the same as
You sodded the ewe.’ The Gladanka was saying,
‘I knew a ewe give a dead lamb every time
Till the farmer slit her belly and stuffed it back.’
And the Weezabaw laughed, ‘Gladys,’ he said,
‘Gladys Barker was that ewe’s name.’ ‘Sod the name’,
Said the Shorket, ‘of the day I married hollow-
Bellied Gladys Barker. If she’s a Shorket
I’m a cherub with six eyes.’ The Gladanka was
Saying, ‘Your teeth grow out of your chin, you
No-Gladanka.’ And the Weezabaw laughed;
‘You two,’ said the Weezabaw, ‘you two will be
The death of me. You ought to see yourselves.
Whatever you both are is far, far
Short of a Weezabaw. You with the vertical mouth,
Keep in your tongue or it will wash your ears; and
You with the nose on top of your head, smell out
The principalities of heaven for all of us.’
III. THE CONVERSATION AT THE INN
Samuel Cramer came down in the lift
And said, ‘My bed’s got bugs.
Where’s the manager?’
And the girl at the desk replied, ‘Not here.’
‘Well find him quick,’ said Samuel Cramer,
‘My bed’s got bugs.’
And the girl at the desk replied, ‘What name please?’
‘Samuel Cramer’, said Samuel Cramer.
‘Not the poet!’ said the girl at the desk.
‘Well I used to be one’, said Samuel Cramer.
‘How you’ve changed!’ said the girl at the desk,
‘The manager, please,’ said Samuel Cramer,
‘I haven’t a notion who you are.’
And the girl at the desk replied, ‘He isn’t here.
Don’t you know La Fanfarlo the dancer?’
‘You’re the worse for the wear,’ said Samuel Cramer,
‘My bed’s got bugs.’
And the Fanfarlo replied, ‘I’ll bump them flat for you
But no francs, please. We like dollars here.’
‘Nothing doing,’ said Samuel Cramer,
‘Where’s the manager?’
And the Fanfarlo replied, ‘He’s outside
Talking to a police inspector.’
‘See, old soot,’ said Samuel Cramer,
‘I’m not here for your health.
I’ve come for a story for my paper.
What’s going on round here?’
‘The new tax’, said the Fanfarlo. ‘We’ve got
A houseful of tax gatherers and tax payers;
And a man’s wanted for murder, called Monteverde.
They think they’ve got him here. They say there’s
Blood on his shirt and they were three days combing
The woods for him. A hot coming
He had of it I’m sure.’
‘No good to me if it’s local’,
Said Samuel Cramer.
‘I thought there was going to be something big
According to a rumour.’
And the Fanfarlo replied, ‘Clear out.’
‘You anticipate me’, said Samuel Cramer.
‘And pay before you go’, said the Fanfarlo.
‘I’ll see you in Hell’, said Samuel Cramer.
‘I’ll tell the manager’, yelled the Fanfarlo.
‘Tell him’, said Samuel Cramer,
‘That the bed’s got bugs, the room reeks, and moreover
There’s a mooing and bellowing going on
In the cattle shed beneath my window.
You’d think a cow was having a dozen
If it wasn’t out of season.
But in this God-forsaken country anything could happen.’
IV. THE CONVERSATION OF THE ANGELS
Before the jubilees of Angels
They said, ‘What is that mess of meat and bone?’
Before the songs of Archangels
They answered, ‘That is no one.’
Before the concerts of Principalities
They said, ‘Who is no one?’
Before the dances of Virtues
They answered, ‘Man is no one’,