BRICKENDON, HERTFORDSHIRE
by Stevie Smith (1902-71)
Sitting alone of a summer’s evening,
I thought
Of the tragedy of unwatered country.
O little village of Brickendon,
Where is thy stream,
Translucent drain of thy manorial sward?
Thy sward is green,
Its source of verdancy guessed but unseen.
Where is thy stream?
I have beat every bound of this wild wood.
I have trod down its spiteful and detaining undergrowth,
Seeking a broad stream and contented fish,
Seeking but fmding not.
Now that the sun
Sou’westering in the sky
Tells me that everything is come,
I rest
Oppressed
By the wood’s profligate viridity,
By thy wood’s sap,
Child of moisture that I cannot tap.
O woods of Brickendon, you have confolmded me
By your appearance of humidity.
I see the pashy ground,
And round and round
My tired feet the rushes twine,
And frogs croak and the sweating slime
Is moved about by an ambiguous brood
Of low and legless life.
Hadst thou thy stream
O wood of Brickendon
This had been
Paradise.
But thy sap’s virtue comes from dank earth’s sweat
And to be wet
Is not enough, O wood.
Hadst thou thy stream,
O little village of Brickendon,
Thy stream
had salined thee
By virtue of destinatory sea,
And thou hadst been a paradise.
But lacking stream
Art but a suppuration of earth’s humours.
Sitting alone on a summer’s evening,
I wept
For the tragedy of unwatered country.
Take thou my tears, O Brickendon
They are thy rank sweats sea.
Stevie Smith was born in Hull on 20 September 1902 as Florence Margaret Smith but was nicknamed Stevie after a famous jockey of the time. She spent most of her life in Palmers Green, north London, where she died on 7 March 1971.