Edith Sitwell, 16 poems

Answers

I kept my answers small and kept them near;

Big questions bruised my mind but still I let

Small answers be a bullwark to my fear.

The huge abstractions I kept from the light;

Small things I handled and caressed and loved.

I let the stars assume the whole of night.

But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity

Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.

Even when all small answers build up to

Protection of my spirit, still I hear

Big answers striving for their overthrow.

And all the great conclusions coming near.

Lullaby

Though the world has slipped and gone,

Sounds my loud discordant cry

Like the steel bird's song on high:

'Still one thing is left - the Bone!'

Then out danced the Babioun.

She sat in the hollow of the sea -

A socket whence the eye's put out -

She sang to the child a lullaby

(The steel birds' nest was thereabout.)

Do, do, do, do -

Thy mother's hied to the vaster race:

The Pterodactyl made its nest

And laid a steel egg in her breast -

Under the Judas-coloured sun.

She'll work no more, nor dance, nor moan,

And I am come to take her place,

Do, do.

There's nothing left but earth's low bed -

(The Pterodactyl fouls its nest):

But steel wings fan thee to thy rest,

And wingless truth and larvae lie

And eyeless hope and handless fear -

All these for thee as toys are spread,

Do - do -

Red is the bed of Poland, Spain,

And thy mother's breast, who has grown wise

In that fouled nest. If she could rise,

Give birth again,

In wolfish pelt she'd hide thy bones

To shield thee from the world's long cold,

And down on all fours shouldst thou crawl,

For thus from no height canst thou fall -

Do, do.

She'd give no hands: there's naught to hold

And naught to make: there's dust to sift,

But no food for the hands to lift.

Do, do.

Heed my ragged lullaby,

Fear not living, fear not chance,

All is equal - blindness, sight,

There is no depth, there is no height:

Do, do.

The Judas-coloured sun is gone,

And with the Ape thou art alone -

Do,

   Do.

Serenade, Any Man to Any Woman

Dark angel who art clear and straight

as canon shining in the air,

your blackness doth invade my mind

and thunderous as the armored wind

that rained on Europe is your hair,

And so I love you till I die

(unfaithful I, the canon’s mate)

Forgive my love of such brief span,

But fickle is the flesh of man,

and death’s cold puts the passion out.

I’ll woo you with a serenade –

The wolfish howls the starving made,

And lies shall be your canopy

To shield you from the freezing sky.

Yet when I clasp you in my arms –

who are my sleep, the zero hour

that clothes instead of flesh my heart,

you in my heaven have no part,

for you my mirage broken in flower,

can never see what dead men know !

Then die with me and be my love :

The grave shall be your shady grove

and in your pleasaunce rivers flow

(to ripen this new paradise)

from a more universal flood

than Noah knew: But yours is blood,

Yet still you will imperfect be

that in my heart the death’s chill grows,

a rainbow shining in the night,

born of my tears … your lips, the bright

summer-old folly of the rose.

Artwork by Sarah Cliff

Aubade

JANE, Jane,

Tall as a crane,

The morning light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,

Jane, Jane, come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite

Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone

From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light

Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain

With overtones like the blunt rain.

The light would show (if it could harden)

Eternities of kitchen garden,

Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,

And wooden flowers that 'gin to cluck.

In the kitchen you must light

Flames as staring, red and white,

As carrots or as turnips shining

Where the cold dawn light lies whining.

Cockscomb hair on the cold wind

Hangs limp, turns the milk's weak mind . . .

Jane, Jane,

Tall as a crane,

The morning light creaks down again!

Portrait of a Barmaid

Metallic waves of people jar

Through crackling green toward the bar

Where on the tables chattering-white

The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.

Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,

Shroud wooden faces in their wiles —

Sometimes they splash like water (you

Yourself reflected in their hue).

The conversation loud and bright

Seems spinal bars of shunting light

In firework-spurting greenery.

O complicate machinery

For building Babel, iron crane

Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane

In noise and murder like the sea

Without its mutability!

Outside the bar where jangling heat

Seems out of tune and off the beat —

A concertina's glycerine

Exudes, and mirrors in the green

Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints

Of tentative and half-soiled tints.

Still Falls the Rain

Still falls the Rain---

Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---

Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails

Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain

With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat

In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:

Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain

Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain

At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.

Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us---

On Dives and on Lazarus:

Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one.

Still falls the Rain---

Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:

He bears in His Heart all wounds,---those of the light that died,

The last faint spark

In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark,

The wounds of the baited bear---

The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat

On his helpless flesh... the tears of the hunted hare.

Still falls the Rain---

Then--- O Ile leape up to my God: who pulles me doune---

See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:

It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree

Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart

That holds the fires of the world,---dark-smirched with pain

As Caesar's laurel crown.

Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man

Was once a child who among beasts has lain---

"Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."

Edith Sitwell reads  Still Falls the Rain. This recording comes from a 1946 disc that was part of a series masterminded by the author and literary impresario John Lehmann.   The Poetry Archive

The Dancers: (During A Great Battle, 1916)

The floors are slippery with blood:

The world gyrates too. God is good

That while His wind blows out the light

For those who hourly die for is –

We still can dance each night.

The music has grown numb with death –

But we will suck their dying breath,

The whispered name they breathed to chance,

To swell our music, make it loud

That we may dance, - may dance.

We are the dull blind carrion-fly

That dance and batten. Though God die

Mad from the horror of the light –

The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, -

We dance, we dance, each night.

At the Fair

     I. Springing Jack

Green wooden leaves clap light away,

Severely practical, as they

Shelter the children candy-pale,

The chestnut-candles flicker, fail . . .

The showman’s face is cubed clear as

The shapes reflected in a glass

Of water—(glog, glut, a ghost’s speech

Fumbling for space from each to each).

The fusty showman fumbles, must

Fit in a particle of dust

The universe, for fear it gain

Its freedom from my cube of brain.

Yet dust bears seeds that grow to grace

Behind my crude-striped wooden face

As I, a puppet tinsel-pink

Leap on my springs, learn how to think—

Till like the trembling golden stalk

Of some long-petalled star, I walk

Through the dark heavens, and the dew

Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through.

     II. The Ape Watches “Aunt Sally”

The apples are an angel’s meat;

The shining dark leaves make clear sweet

The juice; green wooden fruits alway

Fall on these flowers as white as day—

(Clear angel-face on hairy stalk:

Soul grown from flesh, an ape’s young talk!)

And in this green and lovely ground

The Fair, world-like, turns round and round

And bumpkins throw their pence to shed

Aunt Sally’s wooden clear-striped head.—

I do not care if men should throw

Round sun and moon to make me go—

As bright as gold and silver pence . . .

They cannot drive their black shade hence!

“Tournez, Tournez, Bon Chevaux De Bois”

Turn, turn again,

Ape’s blood in each vein!

The people that pass

Seem castles of glass,

The old and the good

Giraffes of the blue wood,

The soldier, the nurse,

Wooden-face and a curse,

Are shadowed with plumage

Like birds, by the gloomage.

Blond hair like a clown’s

The music floats—drowns

The creaking of ropes,

The breaking of hopes,

The wheezing, the old,

Like harmoniums scold;

Go to Babylon, Rome,

The brain-cells called home,

The grave, new Jerusalem—

Wrinkled Methusalem!

From our floating hair

Derived the first fair

And queer inspiration

Of music, the nation

Of bright-plumed trees

And harpy-shrill breeze . . .

     *  *  *  *

Turn, turn again,

Ape’s blood in each vein!

Waltz

Daisy and Lily,

Lazy and silly,

Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea, --

Talking once more 'neath a swan-bosomed tree.

Rose castles,

Tourelles,

Those bustles

Where swells

Each foam-bell of ermine,

They roam and determine

What fashions have been and what fashions will be, --

What tartan leaves born,

What crinolines worn.

By Queen Thetis,

Pelisses

Of tarlatine blue,

Like the thin plaided leaves that the castle crags grew;

Or velours d'Afrande:

On the water-gods' land

Her hair seemed gold trees on the honey-cell sand

When the thickest gold spangles, on deep water seen,

Were like twanging guitar and like cold mandoline,

And the nymphs of great caves,

With hair like gold waves

Of Venus, wore tarlatine.

Louis and Charlottine

(Boreas' daughters)

And the nymphs of deep waters,

The nymph Taglioni, Grisi the ondine,

Wear plaided Victoria and thin Clementine

Like the crinolined waterfalls;

Wood-nymphs wear bonnets, shawls;

Elegant parasols

Floating were seen.

The Amazons wear balzarine of jonquille

Beside the blond lace of a deep-falling rill;

Through glades like a nun

They run from and shun

The enormous and gold-rayed rustling sun;

And the nymphs of the fountains

Descend from the mountains

Like elegant willows

On their deep barouche pillows,

In cashmere Alvandar, barege Isabelle,

Like bells of bright water from clearest wood-well.

Our elegantes favouring bonnets of blond,

The stars in their apiaries,

Sylphs in their aviaries,

Seeing them, spangle these, and the sylphs fond

From their aviaries fanned

With each long fluid hand

The manteaux espagnoles,

Mimic the waterfalls

Over the long and the light summer land.

So Daisy and Lily,

Lazy and silly,

Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea,

Talking once more 'neath a swan-bosomed tree.

Rose castles,

Tourelles,

Those bustles!

Mourelles

Of the shade in their train follow.

Ladies, how vain, -- hollow, --

Gone is the sweet swallow, --

Gone, Philomel!

                                          photograph by Tim Walker, model Tilda Swinton 

Déjeuner sur l'herbe

Green apples dancing in a wash of sun —

Ripples of sense and fun —

A net of light that wavers as it weaves

The sunlight on the chattering leaves;

The half-dazed sound of feet,

And carriages that ripple in the heat.

The parasols like shadows of the sun

Cast wavering shades that run

Across the laughing faces and across

Hair with a bird-bright gloss.

The swinging greenery casts shadows dark,

Hides me that I may mark

How, buzzing in this dazzling mesh, my soul

Seems hardening it to flesh, and one bright whole.

O sudden feathers have a flashing sheen!

The sun's swift javelin

The bird-songs seem, that through the dark leaves pass;

And life itself is but a flashing glass.

By the Lake

ACROSS the flat and the pastel snow

Two people go . . . . 'And do you remember

When last we wandered this shore?' . . . 'Ah no!

For it is cold-hearted December.'

'Dead, the leaves that like asses's ears hung on the trees

When last we wandered and squandered joy here;

Now Midas your husband will listen for these

Whispers--these tears for joy's bier.'

And as they walk, they seem tall pagodas;

And all the ropes let down from the cloud

Ring the hard cold bell-buds upon the trees--codas

Of overtones, ecstasies, grown for love's shroud

Clown’s Houses

BENEATH the flat and paper sky

The sun, a demon's eye,

Glowed through the air, that mask of glass;

All wand'ring sounds that pass

Seemed out of tune, as if the light

Were fiddle-strings pulled tight.

The market-square with spire and bell

Clanged out the hour in Hell;

The busy chatter of the heat

Shrilled like a parakeet;

And shuddering at the noonday light

The dust lay dead and white

As powder on a mummy's face,

Or fawned with simian grace

Round booths with many a hard bright toy

And wooden brittle joy:

The cap and bells of Time the Clown

That, jangling, whistled down

Young cherubs hidden in the guise

Of every bird that flies;

And star-bright masks for youth to wear,

Lest any dream that fare

--Bright pilgrim--past our ken, should see

Hints of Reality.

Upon the sharp-set grass, shrill-green,

Tall trees like rattles lean,

And jangle sharp and dissily;

But when night falls they sign

Till Pierrot moon steals slyly in,

His face more white than sin,

Black-masked, and with cool touch lays bare

Each cherry, plum, and pear.

Then underneath the veiled eyes

Of houses, darkness lies--

Tall houses; like a hopeless prayer

They cleave the sly dumb air.

Blind are those houses, paper-thin

Old shadows hid therein,

With sly and crazy movements creep

Like marionettes, and weep.

Tall windows show Infinity;

And, hard reality,

The candles weep and pry and dance

Like lives mocked at by Chance.

The rooms are vast as Sleep within;

When once I ventured in,

Chill Silence, like a surging sea,

Slowly enveloped me.

Four in the Morning

Cried the navy-blue ghost

Of Mr. Belaker

The allegro Negro cocktail-shaker,

"Why did the cock crow,

Why am I lost,

Down the endless road to Infinity toss'd?

The tropical leaves are whispering white

As water; I race the wind in my flight.

The white lace houses are carried away

By the tide; far out they float and sway.

White is the nursemaid on the parade.

Is she real, as she flirts with me unafraid?

I raced through the leaves as white as water...

Ghostly, flowed over the nursemaid, caught her,

Left her...edging the far-off sand

Is the foam of the sirens' Metropole and Grand;

And along the parade I am blown and lost,

Down the endless road to Infinity toss'd.

The guinea-fowl-plumaged houses sleep...

On one, I saw the lone grass weep,

Where only the whimpering greyhound wind

Chased me, raced me, for what it could find."

And there in the black and furry boughs

How slowly, coldly, old Time grows,

Where the pigeons smelling of gingerbread,

And the spectacled owls so deeply read,

And the sweet ring-doves of curded milk

Watch the Infanta's gown of silk

In the ghost-room tall where the governante

Gesticulates lente and walks andante.

'Madam, Princesses must be obedient;

For a medicine now becomes expedient--

Of five ingredients--a diapente,

Said the governante, fading lente...

In at the window then looked he,

The navy-blue ghost of Mr. Belaker,

The allegro Negro cocktail-shaker--

And his flattened face like the moon saw she--

Rhinoceros-black (a flowing sea!).

The Web Of Eros

Within your magic web of hair, lies furled

The fire and splendour of the ancient world;

The dire gold of the comet's wind-blown hair;

The songs that turned to gold the evening air

When all the stars of heaven sang for joy.

The flames that burnt the cloud-high city Troy.

The mænad fire of spring on the cold earth;

The myrrh-lit flame that gave both death and birth

To the soul Phoenix; and the star-bright shower

That came to Danaë in her brazen tower...

Within your magic web of hair lies furled

The fire and splendour of the ancient world.

Scotch Rhapsody

Do not take a bath in Jordan, Gordon,

On the holy Sabbath, on the peaceful day! '

Said the huntsman, playing on his old bagpipe,

Boring to death the pheasant and the snipe —

Boring the ptarmigan and grouse for fun —

Boring them worse than a nine-bore gun.

Till the flaxen leaves where the prunes are ripe,

Heard the tartan wind a-droning in the pipe,

And they heard Macpherson say:

'Where do the waves go? What hotels

Hide their bustles and their gay ombrelles?

And would there be room? —

Would there be room?

Would there be room

for

me?

There is a hotel at Ostend

Cold as the wind, without an end,

Haunted by ghostly poor relations

Of Bostonian conversations

(Like bagpipes rotting through the walls.)

And there the pearl-ropes fall like shawls

With a noise like marine waterfalls.

And 'Another little drink wouldn't do us any harm! '

Pierces through the Sabbatical calm.

And that is the place for me!

So do not take a bath in Jordan, Gordon,

On the holy Sabbath, on the peaceful day —

Or you'll never go to heaven, Gordon Macpherson,

And speaking purely as a private person

That is the place

— that is the place

— that is the

place

for

me!

About her poetry

Poetry Foundation

Biography by Richard Greene

The Guardian

The Eccentric Edith Sitwell

CR Fashion Book 

Edith Sitwell, sitter in 56 portraits

National Portrait Gallery

Tilda Swinton Transforms Again, Into the Legendary Eccentric Edith Sitwell. Photography by Tim Walker. 

W Magazine, November 5, 2018. 

The grave of Edith Sitwell at Weedon Lois, Northamptonshire, U.K.  The bronze hands sculpted by Henry Moore.

The past and the present

Are as one -

Accordant and discordant

Youth and age,

And death and birth.

For out of one came all -

From all come one.