Complete Poems: Muriel Spark

‘And I have been gagged and riven

  For nothing less than to go in peace

  To Hell or to Heaven.’

  Then Death said, ‘Heaven is not my province

  And Hell is not my territory,

  So if you must follow, my true fellow,

  I think you should follow not me.’

  ‘But I shall follow you,’ said Samuel Cramer,

  ‘To the world invisible

  Where I’ll be free to hack my way

  To the bounds of Heaven or Hell.

  ‘Oh I shall rock the ethereal foundations,

  Wherever the world invisible is,

  And I shall rend until I find

  A way to depart in peace.’

  ‘The terms of departure in the peace treaty,’

  Said Death,

  ‘According to our annals,

  Provide for a proper mortality

  Only through the proper channels.

  ‘And according to the formula

  That I am furnished with,

  There is a staple amnesia

  That leeches to the pith.

  ‘It’s blind, it’s blind, the keen-eyed kind,

  It’s deaf, the sedulous ear,

  And words of legendary address

  Swallow each other’s pointedness

  In the place where I transpire.

  ‘This is the formula that moles

  Its blind way to Heaven or Hell;

  And sometimes in the last event

  I hear a solitary call:

  Sever my ears in a hundred years

  But let me listen a while.

  ‘And often I hear a lonely noise

  Before the dark sets in:

  Make me null at a distant spell

  But leave me rife till then.

  And mortified from every side

  The voice of memory comes crying.

  ‘It’s Hey, Death! and it’s Hoa, Death!

  Will you remember me?

  But there’s no clause for a personal case

  Laid down in the peace treaty.

  ‘It’s checked, it’s checked, the retrospect,

  It’s lapsed, the sympathetic kind

  And agitation’s under stress

  Of a rigid absent-mindedness

  In the place where I impend.

  ‘So if you must follow, my true fellow,

  I think you should follow not me,

  For there’s no scope for a talented type

  In the loss of memory.’

  All in the convalescent ward,

  A bell rang, and the night came in,

  And every man an enemy

  On the narrow benches lying.

  ‘I call you all,’ cried Samuel Cramer,

  ‘To witness my treachery

  If I contract the false pact

  That was offered me this day.

  ‘And when the hawk shall creep in the earth

  And hogs nest in the sun,

  Then I’ll forget the prime estate

  Of all things I have known.

  ‘When the lizard mates with Pegasus

  And the lynx lies with the roe,

  Then I’ll forget the black and the bright

  The high delight and the low,

  Manuela de Monteverde

  And the dancing Fanfarlo.’

  FROM THE LATIN

  Persicos Odi

  Persicos odi, puer, apparatus:

  Displicent nexae philyra coronae:

  Mitte sectari, rosa quo locorum

  Sera moretur.

  Simplici myrto nihil allabores

  Sedulus curo: neque te ministrum

  Dedecet myrtus, neque me sub arta

  Vite bibentem.

  (Horace 1:38, in the Jacobean mode)

  Weave in my garland, boy, no more

  The trash of Persia, and dispose

  Therein not linden nor the rare

  Protracted rose.

  Thus plainly twine the myrtle wreath

  Which well accords thy servient mien,

  And well thy master, drinking ’neath

  The trellised vine.

  Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni:

  Trahuntque siccas machinae carinas.

  Ac neque jam stabulis gaudet pecus, aut arator igni;

  Nec prata canis albicant pruinis.

  Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus, imminente Luna:

  Junctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes

  Alterno terram quatiunt pede; dum gravis Cyclopum

  Volcanus ardens visit officinas.

  Nunc decet aut viridi nitidum caput inpedire myrto,

  Aut flore, terrae quem ferunt solutae.

  Nunc et in umbrosis Fauno decet immolare lucis,

  Seu poscat agna, sive malit haedo.

  Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,

  Regumque turris. O beate Sesti,

  Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.

  Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque Manes,

  Et domus exilis Plutonia: quo simul mearis,

  Nec regna vini sortiere talis;

  Nec tenerum Lycidan mirabere, quo calet juventus

  Nunc omnis, et mox virgines tepebunt.

  To Lucius Sestius in the Spring

  (from Horace 1:4)

  A change in the weather. Winter’s edge breaks to the soft west wind.

  Now they are rolling the dry keels down to the sea;

  And the cattle no longer huddle in the stalls, nor the ploughman over

  his fire,

  Nor the fields blench frozen under a film of rime.

  But Cythera (call her Venus if you like) is leading the dance now,

  By the light of the pendulous moon, her girls are linking

  Delectable arms and shaking the earth with their feet, keeping time;

  Ferocious Vulcan’s away meanwhile, inspecting his armaments factory.

  Now’s the time to dress yourself up: bind your brows with myrtle

  Or with your pick of the earth’s yield; it’s offered unstintingly;

  Now is the time to sacrifice a lamb to the faun in the shadows

  Of the sacred wood—or give him a kid if he prefers it.

  Know, Sestius, my lucky one, that pale impartial death will knock as hard

  At the gates of a royal fortress as he will at a small hut door.

  Remember, there’s only a lifetime to measure hope by,

  And night’s got you marked already; old legendary ghosts move inward,

  And not far below, there’s a household of shades: once there, you’ll

  never more

  Throw the dice for the odds of being wine-host,

  Nor marvel at exquisite Lycidas who infatuates all the boys,

  Though the girls will soon begin to warm to him too.

  Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum

  Soracte, nec jam sustineant onus

  Silvae laborantes, geluque

  Flumina constiterint acuto.

  Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco

  Large reponens; atque benignius

  Deprome quadrimum Sabina,

  O Thaliarche, merum diota.

  Permitte Divis caetera: qui simul

  Stravere ventos aequore fervido

  Deproeliantis, nec cupressi,

  Nec veteres agitantur orni.

  Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere; et

  Quem fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro

  Appone: nec dulcis amores

  Sperne puer, neque tu choreas.

  Donec virenti canities abest

  Morosa; nunc et campus, et areae,

  Lenesque sub noctem susurri

  Composita repetantur hora:

  Nunc et latentis proditor intimo

  Gratus puellae risus ab angulo,

  Pignusque dereptum lacertis,

  Aut digito male pertinaci.

  Winter Poem

  (from Horace 1:9)

  Look up at Mount Soracte’s dazzling snow

  P
iling along the branches that can barely

  Withstand its weight, while piercing ice

  Impedes the river’s flowing!

  So, Thaliarch, let’s dissolve the cold, stacking

  The hearth with logs, and with a rash indulgence

  Fetch up the four-year vintage jars

  Of undiluted Sabine wine.

  The rest leave to the gods at whose command

  Contending winds and seething seas desist

  Until the sacred cypress-tree

  And ancient ash no longer quake.

  Then cast aside this contemplation of

  The future. Better reckon the random day’s

  Advantage, child, and don’t despise

  Parties and love and those sweet things.

  While boyhood still forestalls cantankerous age,

  Now is the time appropriate to whispered

  Seductive twilight messages

  In city courts and empty lots.

  And now’s your time for secret pleasantries

  With a girl-friend mocking from her corner ambush—

  The time to steal a token from

  Her arm, or half-protesting finger.

  Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

  Rumoresque senum severiorum

  Omnes unius aestimemus assis.

  Soles occidere, et redire possunt:

  Nobis, quum semel occidit brevis lux,

  Nox est perpetua una dormienda.

  Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,

  Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,

  Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum,

  Dein quum millia multa secerimus,

  Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,

  Aut ne quis malus invidere possit,

  Quum tantum sciat esse basiorum.

  Prologue and Epilogue

  (after Catullus)

  PROLOGUE

  (Nox est perpetua una dormienda)

  Let’s live Catullus, or else let us love—

  One or the other, though rumour now

  Let’s live and love till the sun goes out.

  The daylight lasts too long for us

  Who follow after our wills’ distortion

  Along forevers of chosen darkness.

  Those lovers were simple as fire but we

  Advance into ice; they melted like rivers

  But we are others; pale northman,

  Resist that sun that shall offend you;

  Be dumb, though time upon time I call

  Catulle to the ancient stones or sing

  These epithalamia always arrested.

  Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli:

  Sive in extremos penetrabit Indos,

  Litus ut longe resonante Eoa

  Tunditur unda:

  Sive in Hircanos, Arabasque molles,

  Seu Sacas, sagittiferosque Parthos,

  Sive qua septemgeminus colorat

  Aequora Nilus:

  Sive trans altas gradietur Alpes,

  Caesaris visens monumenta magni

  Gallicum Rhenum, horribilesque, ulti-

  mosque Britannos:

  Omnia haec, quaecunque feret voluntas

  Caelitum, tentare simul parati,

  Pauca nuntiate meae puellae

  Non bona dicta;

  Cum suis vivat, valeatque moechis,

  Quos simul complexa tenet trecentos,

  Nullum amans vere, sed idemtidem omnium

  Ilia rumpens.

  Nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem;

  Qui illius culpa cecidit, velut prati

  Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam

  Tactus aratro est.

  EPILOGUE

  (Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli)

  You, Hate and Love, companions of this poet

  Where cities of fire sustain me, and where

  The glaciers clash together the northern tundras’

  Assaulted waters,

  Shall face these weathers of my instruction.

  Then travel courageously, notorious couriers

  Into the icelock, and beyond its zero

  Seek out my love.

  Remind him first of all how he survives

  The flower of death blown over that relinquished

  Meadow where lover and plough break

  Lover and flower alike.

  But let him not believe that a winter invoked

  Can blight the bespoken summers nor silence him

  Being that one who called time upon time,

  Lesbia to the ancient stones.

  AFTERWORD

  Michael Schmidt

  Muriel Spark wrote twenty-two novels and several books of short stories. She wrote essays, critical studies and reviews. She also wrote poems, not in secret, but not making much of a fuss of them, either. In 1952, The Fanfarlo. And other verse appeared, a long poem, with shorter pieces she modestly described as ‘verse’. Fifteen years later, in 1967, easier with the term ‘poem’, she published Collected Poems I, a considered selection. Another decade and a half passed: in 1982 Going up to Sotheby’s, ‘the most complete collection’ to date, appeared: again, a culling. And then, in 2004, All the Poems of Muriel Spark, assembled by the author and her devoted editor at New Directions, New York, Barbara Epler, provided another collation. This present volume retains the thematic order of All the Poems, adding eight poems to that author-approved oeuvre. Though completer, it does not pretend to be Complete.

  But it does make claims for the poems included. By setting them in thematic order, the book invites readers to read them as poems, not as a chronological record of the development of a poet’s skills and concerns over more than half a century. This unfashionable insistence on their primary quality, that they are more than footnotes to a great novelist’s more familiar work, is a way of foregrounding their intrinsic quality poem by poem. They are, in a sense, like the poems of another great novelist poet, Thomas Hardy, ‘applications of ideas to life’. Spark is not a philosopher any more than Hardy was. Like him, she presents what he called ‘a series of fleeting impressions I have never tried to coordinate’, ‘unadjusted impressions’. It is wrong to look in such work for systems or myths.

  The narrative ballad ‘The Fanfarlo’, with its shrewd allusions to the folk and literary ballad traditions, its energy, mystery and narrative momentum, is one of her most delicious works. It deserves to be read with the best fiction. None of the poems included here is less than engaging, each has a tone and narrative, like her short stories, and a distinctive music. She understood the properties of different forms, the distribution of sense that a quatrain allows, the acceleration of short measures and the pensive pacing of free verse, even when it is rhymed. She never seems confined to a form: if a quatrain wants more breathing space she will allow it to run over, to five or six lines, so that it does what it has to do. On the other hand, none of the poems is in an indeterminate form: even the free verse is carefully patterned, the variations played on a clearly established theme.

  Of the poems from the mid-1940s – her first mature work – only a few survive her later re-evaluation. Those published before she was editor of Poetry Review and during her tenure (1947–1949) were severely culled, including the one entitled ‘On Seeing the Picasso-Matisse Exhibition, London, December 1945’ which won her the Premium Competition, a prize with a modest purse attached to it, and which relates thematically to some of the later fiction. Perhaps it seemed to her that the prose had absorbed all the energies of the poem. Only ‘The Victoria Falls’, drawing on her time in Africa, survives here, as in her earlier collecteds. Readers may well stumble upon unfamiliar poems in old journals and anthologies and puzzle at their omission from this Complete Poems. The poet had her reasons: a number of sonnets, a long poem called ‘The Well’ and much else did not pass muster. Her later editors have respected her wishes.

  Nor did her relatively copious juvenilia survive, work included in Gillespie’s High School Magazine, in which she was learning (under the tutelage of Miss Kay,
the original of Miss Jean Brodie) not only the craft of verse but also how to pace language and to touch the strings of feeling, and then, sometimes, to still them with a little irony. Some of her poems were included in The Door of Youth (1931), an anthology drawn from Edinburgh school magazines. The following year she won a competition organised to mark the centenary of Sir Walter Scott’s death and was publically crowned, a plump fourteen-year-old Parnassian queen already sure of her direction, if not quite yet of her genre. Miss Kay took her to hear John Masefield read in public, an experience she did not forget. Later she wrote a book about Masefield, another fiction and verse writer. She also wrote about Emily Brontë, and about Mary Shelley, both like her active in both kinds.

  It was in the 1940s that she discovered how voice functions in a literary work, first on a small scale in verse and then in the larger measure of the short story, and finally in the extended novel. Her fascination with form and formal closure begins in the poems. Even the most rigidly shaped are voiced, and even the most casual are meticulously wrought, the diction, tempo and phrasing revealing at once the drama of the narrative and the character of the narrator. There is invariably a narrator, even in the most lyrical poems, and the narrator addresses us usually in such a way as to spirit us into the poem as equals, co-conspirators, part of the ‘we’, or as the addressee. There are moments of considerable intensity:

  . . . In him the muffled drums of forests

  Inform like dreams, and manifold

  Lynx, eagle, thorn, effect about him

  Their very night and emerald. . . .

  The intimacy is there in the sense of a controlled danger, a dreamed wilderness based on the lived, receding wilderness of Africa, made resonant and mysterious by the semantic non-sequitur ‘their very night and emerald’, and heightened by the uneasy rhyme with ‘manifold’.

  This dream note, not common in her poems, is struck again and again in ‘The Ballad of the Fanfarlo’. There she enters a poetic world familiar from Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, and from the Border Ballads themselves (‘The new moon like a pair of surgical forceps / With the old moon in her jaws’), but touched too by Baudelaire, the erotic symbolism especially (if indeterminately) resonant. Baudelaire’s work affected her, as it had T. S. Eliot in the Sweeney poems, in her medium-length sequence ‘The Nativity’ also. A spiritual battle is enacted in the longer poems, and an aesthetic one, an attempt to find both individual vision and belief. There is a parcelling out of voices, a dissonance on which the poem, refusing to force an artificial close, ends. The dilemma of reconciling high delight and low remains unresolved. It is plain that, as well as Baudelaire, she was reading Shelley, whose vocalic music and metaphorical embodiments were usefully unsettling to her. Outside these poems, hers is generally a civic tone, the poetry possessing the civic virtues we most readily associate with the eighteenth century, though without that century’s mannerly constraints and decorums.