Complete Poems: Muriel Spark

  Before the lyres of Powers

  They said, ‘Each man is one and Man is none.’

  Before the voices of Dominations

  They said, ‘Which man is like another?’

  Before the clamours of Thrones

  They answered, ‘None is like another man.’

  Before the thunders of Cherubim

  They said, ‘To whom is each man known?’

  Before the swift motion of Seraphim

  They answered, ‘Each is known to no man.’

  An angel enquired of an Archangel, ‘How many

  Men have you seen?’ And he replied, ‘Plenty,

  And women too. Divine affection

  For them isn’t easy. What a collection!’

  A Virtue said to a Power, ‘What ceases

  When a man dies?’ And he replied, ‘A species,

  Infinitely precious to God, being all

  There is of his kind. He’s irreplaceable.’

  A Princedom asked of a Domination

  ‘What is sin?’ And he replied, ‘The consumption

  Of men by men. They’ve all got

  An ache to eat what they are not.’

  A Throne to a Cherub said,

  ‘What do you reckon the price per head

  Of men?’ And he replied, ‘I’m lost

  Where sums are concerned. Ask the Holy Ghost.’

  While the Seraphim got ready for the take-off—

  Six wings apiece, shot with bright shimmerings,

  One said, ‘What makes delight?’

  And one replied, ‘The Queen of Heaven goes light.’

  One said, ‘What is to be made known?’

  And one replied, ‘Men are to be made known.’

  One said, ‘What do these heavy six wings signify?’

  And one replied, ‘Two to cover the face, two to

  cover the feet, and two to fly.’

  One said, ‘What do these dances signify?’

  And one replied, ‘The resolution of discrepancy.’

  One said, ‘Fly, fly, for the love

  Of discrepancy most common.’

  And one replied, ‘Fly, fly,

  For the resolution of

  Common incongruity.’

  One said, ‘What’s common to men?’

  And one replied, ‘Uncommonness alone.

  Fly, for the grace

  Of common uncommonness

  Which is to be made known.

  Uncommon men become

  Common to men in Christ’s face,

  Mediator of angels and of men.’

  The Three Kings

  Where do we go from here?

  We left our country,

  Bore gifts,

  Followed a star.

  We were questioned.

  We answered.

  We reached our objective.

  We enjoyed the trip.

  Then we came back by a different way.

  And now the people are demonstrating in the streets.

  They say they don’t need the Kings any more.

  They did very well in our absence.

  Everything was all right without us.

  They are out on the streets with placards:

  Wise Men? What’s wise about them?

  There are plenty of Wise Men,

  And who needs them?—and so on.

  Perhaps they will be better off without us,

  But where do we go from here?

  Sisera

  Sisera, dead by hammer and nail, fared worst

  Where he fared well; the women had fed him first.

  After the kill Deborah came,

  A holy kite to claim the heathen viscera.

  Is not her song impressive? All the same,

  I am for Sisera

  Whose ruin had rhetoric enough and fitness

  For Deborah’s prophecy, so are God’s enemies supplanted.

  She needed no polemic, as God was her witness

  Gloriously to publish the story condensed:

  ‘The stars in their courses fought against Sisera’,

  She descanted.

  The hostess it was, who pinned the villain mute;

  But Deborah whittled her fine art, the keener to spike him

  On a final point: ‘His women wait for the loot.’

  So, from God’s poets may God perfectly defend

  Sisera and all the rest of us like him,

  With whom the stars contend.

  Report on an Interrogation

  There was a convincing story, yes

  But there was something about, well,

  His socks, pale grey threaded with green,

  Was he the man, I mean?

  After all his talk, was he

  What he was claiming to be? I

  For one feel uneasy: how? Why?

  His papers look suitably scruffy and O.K.

  He answered all the questions, yes

  But hesitantly serious about his

  Brother’s death, as if he didn’t know of it,

  Or that he even had a brother.

  Did he suspect a trick?

  That’s why I don’t think it’s him.

  Other reasons: his very accurate

  Remembering of the colour of the curtains

  At Ladbroke Grove in 1986.

  But that was too rehearsed, unless

  He has a memory for useless details.

  And for all that, I don’t believe

  It’s him. I don’t think this is the man.

  He wasn’t there. He has

  Too perfect a memory, and is dressed

  All right, all wrong.

  Family Rose

  O tell me what shall I do with the family symbols,

  The inherited bones and the antique falling rain?

  And now that our Rose is locked up in a madhouse

  Where shall we go if she ever comes out again?

  Where shall I practice the tinkling cymbals

  And where to hide my haunted lover

  Now that the blight has overtaken our Rose,

  The moon banned and the party over?

  Tell me, what will the Knight of the Round Table

  Galloping up on his old-fashioned charger say,

  With his hand on his heart, his velvet knee on the rubble,

  Shall he compare me to an August day?

  I know a bank where the wild Uranium grows,

  Our Rose in its midst with a bee on the brain,

  But where shall we go if she suddenly buds and opens,

  What shall we do if she ever comes out again?

  Nothing to Do

  I’m here in the hotel

  By the sea

  With nothing to do.

  But how do you do that nothing?

  I never did it before.

  Tell me how you begin, and what’s

  Involved?

  My heart isn’t in the job, and

  What did you bring me for?

  How do you go about

  Nothing to do

  What is this nothing? I’ve always

  Done something. Show me

  How it’s done. The sun

  Is going down. It’s quite chilly

  Here on the terrace.

  And now I’ve done nothing

  What do I do next?

  Is This the Place?

  But really, is it the same place, that

  Cosy old-fashioned bistrot we used to eat in

  Years ago, so many years, one forgets

  How many.

  But surely it was right here. And surely

  There’s something about the shape. And yet

  They’ve changed it completely, haven’t they?

  Or have they? This could be somewhere different.

  Here with the tulip lanterns, the tables

  Covered in sheer white over petticoats of pink,

  And the walls bereft of those alpine prints

  Those stags at eve, that army

  Of Napoleo
n, retreating.

  And the windows no longer draped

  In grubby lace, and the waiters

  No longer garbed with aprons but all dressed up

  In black trousers and white coats. It

  Can’t be the place. I think we’re mistaken.

  But look, over there in the corner

  Yes, that is the old proprietor,

  Still as old as ever,

  Bending to stick a piece of cardboard

  Under the leg of the wobbly table.

  Yes, this is the old place.

  So near to Home

  Out of the houses they came in their unlikely clothes

  (The inhabitants being dead inside).

  And do you, barked the officer, expect me

  To believe all this? Where were you

  Last night?

  A woman was wrapped in a woollen scarf

  Very expensively, just like the late owner

  In the house behind her,

  Except that her face was fatter.

  Next they arrested a silver dress

  Befeathered, with a skinny young man inside.

  My friends had already advised me to escape;

  I wasn’t among the wanted; it was not our fight.

  I walked away past the soldiers at the gate

  And went down the street. Should I take a taxi?

  No, it would be thought

  Ridiculous by my friends.

  I should walk. It was so near to home.

  Oh, So So

  The use of words,

  So delicate, so

  So

  So scrupulous, so whispery

  So

  Diplomatic, oh so.

  If you went to a loo

  You’d find the paper

  So delicate, lavender coloured

  Like the curtains. The lavatory

  All mauve, now so

  Special her speech and lapidary

  Words so chosen

  You are frozen to your chair so so

  I declare, everywhere there

  Is nothing here or there, whatever it

  Is is exquisite

  Or it is ‘Oh!’ ‘Oh no!’ ‘Not that’

  Come for dinner there will be

  Small cubes of meat to eat

  I counted every pea.

  Twenty-seven each plate, forty grains

  Rice, so terribly nice.

  It’s all so such and such.

  Not much, oh please, not much.

  Once long ago

  I was not so So, so So

  I was out and about

  On another continent, content

  I was stout.

  But all that’s out, now far out

  I am so

  So, so very much ‘I can’

  With this man, I can exterminate

  His mate.

  So quite so-so ephemeral

  Who’s who, so pale,

  The use of words.

  The Man Who Came to Dinner

  At his age, something light,

  Said my friend.

  She was preparing the dinner.

  But the others, the younger ones?

  Well, I’ll compromise,

  Start with something less exciting

  And for the hungry ones, well, no surprise,

  Something to bite on.

  It involved a melon, that first course.

  And he arrived, tall, with his young wife.

  Full of himself, that night, his flight from

  New York,

  What he had been, his money

  Well piled, out of sight,

  Not up for grabs between courses, in case

  You’d thought of that.

  Well, we had taken his coat and

  yes, his hat.

  Come in, come on, may I

  Introduce . . . sit down,

  What will you drink?

  Then we went to the table.

  His eyes fell on that first dish, laid out:

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t eat that.’ It was a shout

  With a huge exclamation mark.

  General consternation, but his wife

  Sat calmly. She started to eat steadily, steadily.

  ‘Just leave it’, I said to the man,

  So right in his chair, puffed up with his past.

  A kidney pie, a salad: horror of all disasters

  He couldn’t eat that either. His

  Wife ate on.

  We talked amongst ourselves as usual.

  His wife ate on. He drank a few glasses.

  He asked to telephone to New York,

  and did.

  He left with his wife, Goodnight.

  He didn’t reply, far less,

  Write.

  Everything plus the Kitchen Sink

  My kitchen in Trastevere –

  My every little knife and fork –

  Were all reported faithfully

  Back to his old friend in New York.

  The Old Friend, with his foolscap leaves

  Now balding, bent and puffy-eyed,

  Glues his regard on all my moves

  Recorded from the other side.

  From desk to kitchen he appeals:

  Send me some more, old fellow, more.

  For every word I will reward

  As in those days of heretofore.

  And has she treated you unfair

  There in the kitchen? Tell me all.

  Here in my intellectual chair

  In high New York, it’s wonderful.

  The Ballad of the Fanfarlo

  Samuel Cramer, qui signa autrefois du nom de Manuela de Monteverde quelques folies romantiques, – dans le bon temps du Romantisme, – est le produit contradictoire d’un blême Allemand et d’une brune Chilienne.

  BAUDELAIRE

  I

  Samuel Cramer came down in the lift,

  Walked into the street and shut the door.

  Behind him lay a settlement of fever,

  The tremorous metropolis, before.

  The first crossing that Samuel Cramer came to

  A green light showed up and spoke to him,

  ‘I see you are a man with fever on you

  In the middle year of your time.’

  The second crossing that Samuel came to

  He stood beneath the yellow rays:

  ‘I fear you are a man alarmed with fever

  In the middle year of your days.’

  The third crossing that he came to

  He saw a red light there,

  And the light said, ‘Halt, you feverish traffic

  And tell me what you are.

  ‘Now tell, now tell, your title and kind,

  And tell, you feverish fellow

  That wander this metropolis

  From the green light to the yellow.’

  ‘Oh I am Samuel Cramer,’ he said,

  ‘Born of a German father

  Who was as pale as my naked bone,

  And a brown Chilean mother.’

  ‘And where do you come from, Samuel Cramer,

  From the yellow light to the red?’

  ‘I come from the dancing Fanfarlo.

  She lies on her fever bed.’

  ‘And where are you going, Cramer,

  In the middle year of your time?’

  ‘I go to seek my true friend,

  Manuela de Monteverde his name.

  ‘I wander this metropolis

  In the good year of my prime.

  By all the lights that are in the sun

  I fevered go to claim

  Manuela de Monteverde

  Who is my heart’s fame.

  ‘The breath of my infection,

  The water of my name,

  Float in the null subtraction

  That parted me from him,

  Manuela de Monteverde

  Who is my heart’s fame.’

  ‘Follow me, follow me, now Samuel Cramer,

  My dear master to see

  Th
at sits in this metropolis,

  For I think you lie to me.’

  Samuel Cramer turned his footsteps.

  The green light and the yellow said no word;

  And he had come to a high hostel

  With the red light for his guard.

  Samuel Cramer went up in the lift,

  Walked into a room and shut the door.

  Behind him lay the streets of the tremorous city,

  A steel desk and a chair, before.

  ‘And what are you’, said the steel chair.

  ‘With my little red light for a guard,

  That come through the quivering streets of the city,

  Where the green light and the yellow say no word?’

  ‘My name is Samuel Cramer,’ he said,

  ‘Born of a Chilean mother

  Who was as brown as my bone’s marrow,

  And a white German father.’

  ‘Now if you are’, said the steel chair,

  ‘Of a Chilean mother brown

  And a white father from Germany,

  Then you are No Man.

  ‘And where do you come from, Samuel Cramer,

  From the green light to the red?’

  ‘I come from the dancing Fanfarlo

  Laid out on her fever bed.’

  ‘I think you lie, false Samuel Cramer,

  Two times you lie,’ the steel chair said,

  ‘For a hundred years have come and gone

  And the Fanfarlo lies dead.

  ‘And where are you going, Samuel Cramer,

  In the middle year of your days?’

  ‘I seek Manuela de Monteverde

  Who is my heart’s praise.

  ‘And all my nights of fever

  And all my shifting days

  Are an infernal river

  Between my sight and his,

  Manuela de Monteverde

  Who is my heart’s praise.’

  ‘You lie, you lie, false Samuel Cramer,

  Three times you lie as you stand there,

  For Manuela de Monteverde

  He is a steel chair.

  ‘Now follow, now follow, Samuel Cramer,

  Now follow my little red guard

  To No-Man’s sanatorium

  In the antiseptic ward.

  ‘And they shall rip you breast from back

  And ask your white bone

  If you are born of German father

  And a Chilean mother brown.

  ‘They shall rip you lung and lights

  And ask of your brown marrow

  If you are come from the fever bed

  Of the dancing Fanfarlo.

  ‘And they shall rip you throat to thigh

  And ask your false heart

  If Manuela de Monteverde