This began by my feeling a bit g uilty about those clerihews....
THINKING OF EDITH SITWELL
A sloping garden hedged with yew,
five or six feet high, to hide
a stroller in another ride,
great walls of stone, a house facade
a stable block, a poultry yard,
all these familiar adjuncts, tithes
of that ancentral wealth you lived by,
shaped all your outlook and your art,
your scholarship, set you apart,
etherialised with aesthetic brothers,
a quiet girl with a crooked nose
who might have married, we suppose
had you not become a bride of art.
Your dress was like a glorious nun
or academic might have chosen.
Išve heard your carpets were threadbare.
We all know Dylan T. came courting
perhaps what you are most famous for
is recognising that mad genius
it takes a poet to catch a poet
assuredly as a thief a thief
the opposite of Robert Bridges
politely reading G. M. H.,
not realising, such his blindness
that as a poet he was left standing
by the homosexual Jesuit priest...
You formed your lines and wrote them slowly,
you edited, you wrote polemics,
you felt affinities with Pope
and wrote good lines, listened and wrote
you experimented with performance,
you knew that poetry is like music,
you liked to feed the London gossips,
you liked being photographed and courted,
capitalising on those brothers
you knew to be your pride and strength
your cosy Yorkshire, Scarborough background,
your aristocracy, that took you
often to where you wished to be....
Išve heard you loved, and I believe it,
a Russian artist I believe it,
loving would suit you, but not marriage,
you had to be the arch-priestess,
the dedicated muse-handmaiden,
you had to be so many things
that still distract us from your poetry,
to which, enjoining us to copy,
and be inspired by, you were faithful,
(despite the posing and publicity,
despite the snobbery and side-shows)
to which, and who can offer more?
to which you gave your inner core.
Sally Evans
|
