More Miss Smith

I don't know why I am in such a Stevie Smith frame of mind. There must be a reason though. Probably some impulse to escape. I think that my grandmother's death is hitting me pretty hard.  We spoke twice a day, every day, for almost 10 years.

I ordered one of Miss Smith's books last night from Amazon. Novel on Yellow Paper. I used to have a copy of this somewhere, but I seemed to have lost it. I think I bought it from Foyle's on Charing Cross Road in a pre-Blair trip to London.

Today I offer another Smith favorite.

Mr. Over


Mr. Over is dead
He died fighting and true
And on his tombstone they wrote
Over to You.

And pray who is this You
To whom Mr. Over is gone?
Oh if we knew that
We should not do wrong.

But who is this beautiful You
We all of us long for so much
Is he not our friend and our brother
Our father and such?

Yes he is this and much more
This is but a portion
A sea-drop in a bucket
Taken from the ocean.

So the voices spake
Softly above my head:
And a voice in my heart cried: Follow
Where he has led

And a devil's voice cried: Happy
Happy the dead.

Stevie Smith

I was leafing through the collected poems of Stevie Smith today, in between laundry loads, always a nice thing to do on a sunny Saturday, and I found this gem which should be dear to any poet or any other artisan who finds himself feeling down in the dumps.

To School!


Let all the little poets be gathered together in classes
And let prizes be given to them by Prize Asses
And let them be sure to call all the little poets young
And worse follow what's bad begun
But do not expect the Muse to attend this school
Why look already how far she is flown off, she is no fool.