BERNARD SPENCER COMPLETE POETRY

Transcription

1 BERNARD SPENCER COMPLETE POETRY TRANSLATIONS & SELECTED PROSE EDITEI flv PETER ROBINSON BtPDDAXe BQDK3

2 CONTENTS 12 PREFACE 15 INTRODUCTION Complete Poetry AEGEAN ISLANDS AND OTHER POEMS (1946) Poems before Allotments: April 49 A Hand 50 Plains as Large as Europe 51 There was no Instruction Given 52 Houses are Uniformed 54 Evasions 55 Portrait of a Woman and Others 56 A Cold Night 57 Part of Plenty 58 Cage A Thousand Killed 61 Suburb Factories 62 Waiting 63 How Must we Live? 64 My Sister Poems 1940 to Aegean Islands Greek Excavations 69 Salonika June Delos 71 Base Town 73 Death of an Airman 74 Letters 75 Libyan Front 76 Egyptian Delta 77 Acre 78 Frontier

3 79 Cairo Restaurant 80 The Ship 81 Behaviour of Money 83 Yachts on the Nile 84 Olive Trees 85 The Building of the House 86 Peasant Festival 87 Egyptian Dancer at Shubra 88 Passed On 89 In an Auction Room 90 Sarcophagi WITH LUCK LASTING (1963) 93 The Beginning 94 Delicate Grasses 95 Notes by a Foreigner 97 From my Window 98 Mediterranean Suburbs 99 Fluted Armour 100 Out of Sleep 101 A Spring Wind 103 On a Carved Axle-Piece from a Sicilian Cart 104 The Boats 105 At Courmayeur 106 In a Foreign Hospital 107 Regent's Park Terrace 108 Letter Home 109 Morning in Madrid 110 The Cafe with the Blue Shrine 111 Castanets 112 In Athens 113 The Rendezvous 114 The Lottery Sellers 115 Train to Work 116 At 'The Angler' 117 The Administrator 118 Night-time: Starting to Write 119 Sud-Express

4 120 Boat Poem 122 Table Tennis 123 The Leopards 124 A Sunday 125 Cripples 126 Watchers 127 The Wedding Pictures 128 By a Breakwater 129 Lop-sided 130 Donkey 131 Full Moon 132 The Agents 133 Chestnuts 134 Blue Arm 135 Near Aranjuez 136 On the Road COLLECTED POEMS (1965) Poems from Vienna 139 The Empire Clock 140 On the 'Sievering' Tram 141 The Invaders 142 A Number 143 Properties of Snow 144 Clemen te 145 You 146 Dr Karl Lueger 147 To Piers Spencer, five months old 148 Traffic in April UNCOLLECTED AND UNPUBLISHED POEMS Early Poems 1929 to 'The lights with big elegant fingers' 152 Schedules 153 Collection 154 Festa

5 156 'Above, the fingers of the tree' 157 Departure 158 'Those near and dead who think there is another' 159 After Love f 161 Poem ('After the wheels and wings of this intense day') 162 Clouded, Still, Evening 163 Poem ('White factories lancing sky') 164 Two Poems ('My pulling on my shoes') 164 ('Her hands waking on her lap') 166 Poem ('Who sees the rain fall into the Spring land') 167 'For seeing whole I had been too near my friends' 168 'Such height of corn, so many miles' Uncollected Poems 1935 to 'Most things having a market price' 171 'I, Jack, walking on the hill's shoulder' 172 The Runner 173 Winter Landscape 174 The House 175 Going to the Country 176 Picked Clean from the World 177 They Tell a Lie 178 In Memoriam 180 The Top-Storey Room Uncollected Poems 1947 to Pino 183 The Clock 184 For Signorina Brunella Mori 185 A Ward 186 Black Cat 187 Castille 188 This Day 189 Witness 190 Written on a Cigarette Packet 191 From the Military Academy 192 The Train Window Occasional and Unfinished Poems 195 from Conducted Tour after Edward Lear 196 'From Cairo this: scorn upon verse from Alex'

6 197 'For madmen, darkness whip and chain' 198 'I met you, George, upon a refuse dump' 199 Casa di P 201 'The girl in the black mantilla with the ink splash eyes' 202 'Look at my suit' 203 'Rocks like a Diirer landscape, torn and hacked' 204 'The story is of battles and of conquest all the way' Translations George Seferis: THE KING OF ASINE AND OTHER POEMS (1948) (with Nanos Valaoritis and Lawrence Durrell) Part I: Myth of our History 'The messenger' 'Still another well within a cave' Remember the Baths by Which You Were Slain Argonauts 'We never knew them' M.R South Wind 'What do they seek our souls as they travel' 'The harbour is old, I cannot await any longer' 'Our native place is enclosed, all mountains' 'Your blood sometimes froze like the moon' A Bottle in The Sea Hydra 'Three red pigeons in the sun' jquid nkaxavmv Opacissimus? And the Name is Orestes Astyanax 'I am sad because I let a broad river flow between my fingers' 'And if the wind blows it does not cool us' 'In my breast the wound opens again' 'We that set out on this pilgrimage' 'Now when so much has passed before our eyes' 'A little further' 'Here terminate the works of the sea, the works of love'

7 Part II: Ancient Dances Santorin Mycenae Part III: Poems from A Book of ExerHses' Five Japanese Poems Epitaph Epiphany, In the Manner of G.S. Part IV: Poems from 'Log Book 1 and 2' Mathias Pascalis among the Roses Our Sun Morning The Return of the Exile The King of Asine Stratis the Mariner among the Agapanthus Flowers Calligraphy Old Man on the River Bank Stratis the Mariner on the Dead Sea Odysseus Elytis: THE MAD POMEGRANATE TREE (with Nanos Valaoritis) 241 The Mad Pomegranate Tree Eugenio Montale: FOUR POEMS 243 The Lemon Trees 245 'Don't ask us for the word which cuts and shapes' 246 'Bring me the sunflower so that I can transplant it' 247 'To shelter, pale and preoccupied' George Seferis: TWO POEMS 248 The Mourning Girl 249 Denial

8 Selected Prose 253 The Exhibition of Dutch Art at Burlington House 255 Note on Auden 256 Ideas about Poems 257 Keith Douglas: An Obituary Note 258 The Wind-Blown Island of Mykonos 261 Dialogue on Poetry 265 Madrid Journal 271 New Poetry 275 I Will Abroad 279 Ankara Notebook 282 Anatolia Notebook 284 Poems by Bernard Spencer 286 Lawrence Durrell 289 Context 291 University of Madrid Lecture 298 Interview with Peter Orr 304 Bernard Spencer Writes NOTES 342 BIBLIOGRAPHY 347 INDEX