Stevie Smith

Mother, among the dustbins and the manure I feel the measure of my humanity, an allure As of the presence of God, I am sure In the dustbins, in the manure, in the cat

Drugs made Pauline vague. She sat one day at the breakfast table Fingering in a baffled way The fronds of the maidenhair plant. Was it the salt you were looking for dear? Said Dulcie,

Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters Always out of office hours running with her social betters But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her Not

Tenuous and Precarious Were my guardians, Precarious and Tenuous, Two Romans. My father was Hazardous, Hazardous Dear old man, Three Romans. There was my brother Spurious, Spurious Posthumous, Spurious was Spurious, Was four Romans.

I longed for companionship rather, But my companions I always wished farther. And now in the desolate night I think only of the people i should like to bite.

The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena By indulging native appetites played was now been seen a Not entirely negligible part In consolidating at the very start The position

Our Bog is dood, our Bog is dood, They lisped in accents mild, But when I asked them to explain They grew a little wild. How do you know your Bog is dood My

It was my bridal night I remember, An old man of seventy-three I lay with my young bride in my arms, A girl with t. b. It was wartime, and overhead The Germans were

My heart goes out to my Creator in love Who gave me Death, as end and remedy. All living creatures come to quiet Death For him to eat up their activity And give them

I always remember your beautiful flowers And the beautiful kimono you wore When you sat on the couch With that tigerish crouch And told me you loved me no more. What I cannot remember

He said no word of her to us Nor we of her to him, But oh it saddened us to see How wan he grew and thin. We said: she eats him day and

Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises in

He told his life story to Mrs. Courtly Who was a widow. ‘Let us get married shortly’, He said. ‘I am no longer passionate, But we can have some conversation before it is too

Happiness is silent, or speaks equivocally for friends, Grief is explicit and her song never ends, Happiness is like England, and will not state a case, Grief, like Guilt, rushes in and talks apace.