Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SUSSMUND'S ADDRESS TO AN UNKNOWN GOD (ADAPTED FROM HIGH GERMAN), by FORD MADOX FORD Poem Explanation Poet's Biography First Line: My god, they say I have no bitterness Last Line: And turn reformer. Alternate Author Name(s): Hueffer, Ford Hermann; Hueffer, Ford Madox Subject(s): God; Sussmund, Carl Eugen Von (1872-1910) | ||||||||
MY God, they say I have no bitterness! Dear Unknown God, I gasp, I fade, I pine! No bitterness! Have firs no turpentine? If so, it's true. Because I do not go wandering round Piccadilly Like an emasculated lily In a low-necked flannel shirt beneath the rain. (Is that what you'd do, Oh God Unknown, If you came down To Piccadilly And worried over London town?) Wailing round Covent Garden's what I should do Declaiming to the beefy market porters Dramatic propaganda about social wrongs Denouncing Edward Morters Or saying that Mr William Pornett Is eleven kinds of literary hornet, Or that the death of Mr Arthur Mosse Would be no sort of loss But a distinct gain That sort of silly literary songs About no one you know, And no one else could ever want to know. You owe (You've heard a thousand thousand dat qui cito's) Some sort of poisonous dew Shed on the flowers where these high-horned mosquitoes Dance in a busy crew. But they will go on setting up their schools, Making their little rules, Finding selected ana, Collected in Montana: Connected with Commedié Diviné Or maidens with names like Deiridriné... Dear Lord, you know the stuff You must have heard enough. Find me a barrel into which to creep Dear Unknown God, and get dead drunk and sleep. But listen, this is for your ear alone (God: where are you? Let me come close and whisper What no one knowsI'm really deadly tired, I cannot write a line, my hands are stiff, Writing's a rotten job, my head goes round: You have afflicted me with whip-cord nerves. That hammering fool drives me distracted... God! Strike him with colic, send him screaming home. Strike, Dash and Dash and Dash with eye complaints; That beast who choked his dog with a tight collar (He gave his child the lead to hold) last night; It made me sick; God strike him with the pip. And send down one dark night and no one near And one white throat within my fingers' grip!) Dear God, you bade me be a gentleman, And well you know I've been it. But their rot... Sometimes it makes me angry. This last season I've listened smiling to new Celtic bards, To Anti-Vivisectionists and Friends of Peace, To Neo-Psychics, Platonists and Poets Who saved the Universe by chopping logs In your own image. ... I've smiled at Whigs intoning Whiggery To keep the Labour Market down; at Tories Sickening for office. I have surely been Plumb centre in the Movement. O my God Is this a man's work. God I've backed up's With proper letters in the Daily Press: I've smiled at Dowagers and Nonconformists; At wriggling dancers; forty pianists; Jew politicians; Front Rank Statesmen's's Yankee conductors of chaste magazines... God, fill my purse and let me go away. But God, dear God! I'll never get away I know the. ... you are! That's off my chest. You'll never let me go. I know I'll never drink myself dead drunk Because to-morrow I shall have appointments You'll make them for mewith a Jail Reform And Pure Milk Rottersuch a pleasant man! One garden city builder, seven peers Concerned with army remounts, and a girl Mad to take dancing lessons! Such my morrow! It's not so much I ask Great God of mine (Fill up my little purse and let me go!) These earnest, cold-in-the-heart and practised preachers Have worked their will on me for long enough, Some boring me to tears while I sat patient; Some picked my purse and bit me in the back The while I smiled as you have taught me to, (Fill up my little purse and let me go!) It's not my job to go denouncing jobs You did not build me for it. Not my job! Whilst they are on the make, snatching their bits Beneath the wheels of ninety-nine reforms. But this is truth; There's not one trick they've not brought off on me, I guess they think I haven't noticed it For I've no bitterness... They've lied about me to my mistresses, Stolen my brandy, plagiarized my books, Lived on me month by month, broken agreements, Perjured themselves in courts, and sworn false oaths With all the skill of Protestant British tradesmen Plundering a Papist and a foreigner With God on their lips. ... But all that's private... Oh, you sleeping God, I hope you sit amongst the coloured tents Of any other rotten age than this With great pavilions tinctured all with silks, Where emerald lawns go stretching into space, With mailèd horses, simple drunken knights, Punctilious heralds and high-breasted ladies Beauteous beyond belief and not one better Than you would have her bein such a heaven Where there's no feeling of the moral pulse, I think I'd find some peacewith treachery Of the sword and dagger kind to keep it sweet Adultery, foul murder, pleasant things, A touch of incest, theft, but no Reformers. Dear God of mine Who've tortured me in many pleasant ways I hope you've had some fun. And thank you, God! No doubt you'll keep your bargain in the end, No doubt I'll get my twopenny-halfpenny pay At the back door of some bright hued pavilion From a whore of Heaven. ... But when it comes to "have no bitterness"... (For bitter we read "earnest") I've no stomach For such impertinence; its subtlety (You know it, God, but let me get it down) Is too ingenious. It implies just this: "Here is a man when times are out of joint Who will not be enraged at Edward Morter, Pornett or Mosse; who will not to the woes Of a grey underworld lend passionate ears Nor tear his hair to tatters in the cause Of garden suburbs or of guinea pigs Injected with bacilli...Such a man (So say the friends that I have listened to Whole wasted, aching desolate afternoons!) Is morally castrated; pass him by; Give him no management in this great world, No share in fruity Progress or the wrongs Of market porters, tram conductors, pimps, Marriage-reforming divorcees, Whig statesmen Or serious Drama." Did I, dear God, ever attempt to shine As such a friend of Progress? God, did I Ever ambitiously raise up my voice To outshout these eminent preachers? Suck up importance from a pauper's wrongs I never did! But these mosquitoes must make precious sure I do not take a hand in their achievements Therefore they say, I have no bitterness Being a eunuch amongst these proper men, Who stand foursquare 'gainst evil (that's their phrase!) God, you've been hard on me; I'm plagued with boils, Little mosquito-stings, warts, poverty! Yes, very hard. But when all's catalogued You've been a gentleman in all your fun. No doubt you'll keep your bargain, Unknown God. This surely you will never do to me Say I'm not bitter. That you'll never do. 'Twould be to outpass the bounds of the Divine And turn Reformer. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A MASQUE OF THE TIMES O' DAY by FORD MADOX FORD A NIGHT PIECE by FORD MADOX FORD A SOLIS ORTUS CARDINE by FORD MADOX FORD A SUABIAN LEGEND by FORD MADOX FORD ALDINGTON KNOLL; THE OLD SMUGGLER SPEAKS by FORD MADOX FORD AN ANNIVERSARY by FORD MADOX FORD AN END PIECE by FORD MADOX FORD AN IMITATION (TO M.M.) by FORD MADOX FORD AND AFTERWARDS (A SAVAGE SORT OF SONG ON THE ROAD) by FORD MADOX FORD |
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