odourofdevonviolet.com
The Scent That Captures That "1930s Moment"!
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or to the various credited sources © 2014
LXXX
Tins of processed mush, such are our manufactured characters,
Copied, processed, recycled, rehashed –all those fruits
Of our labours picked, plucked, peeled, put in juice to stew
To shrunken prunes, then poured into tins, sealed, stacked up
On makeshift shelves of the Trussel Trust, where truth’s as
Sought-after as truffles –canned handouts of comestible
Benefits, organic giros for digestion of indigence stripped
Of dignity, vouchers transubstantiated into victuals,
Fish and loaves, but there are no Beatitudes to soften blows
To the soul of the consumer scooped of power to consume,
Spending power (the modern breath of the Commerce-God
Which, alone, animates the body’s postponed corpse), and
All this produce, all this over-production for under-
Consumption –stigmatised with vouchers, tickets for handout
Lottos, benefits Bingo, pre-payment cards capped at ‘non-
Essential’ items: cigarettes and booze –those very opiates
Scrimping spirits crave the most to briefly escape
The conscientious throb of abstinence, the aboulia of broke
Sobriety wherein everything seems so infectiously clinical,
Gleaming bright but dirtily at the same time; they’ll pile on all
The labels, brandings, price-tags, stigmas and humiliations
They can –public sympathy for the poor is past its sell-by-
Date (if it had one in the first place!) –onto those brought low
By katabasis of the Capitalist Plan that capitalises on all but
Its people, devalues human currency, pauperises priceless souls
By the power of ephemeral paper –empty stomachs crop up
And howl from empty purses… Perhaps it could be worse?
Under true, unadulterated Communism unemployment is
Hypothetically illegal, or simply doesn’t exist (whereas
Under Capitalism it is a necessary automatic stabilizer
To ensure a perpetual surplus of labour and that wages are
Kept down through competition and high demand for low
Supplies of work –the choice, to be employed and poor, or
Unemployed and poorer) –but possibly because in such
A society it would be seen as a crime, not on the part
Of the unemployed, but on the State as employer: any person
To be kept out from the pool of common production would
Be perceived as a victim of government incompetence and
Neglect… As for the frequently unemployable poet, well, in
Communist society, his product would be valued above the many,
He would be gainfully employed by very dint of his publicly
Invested visionary vocation –Soviet versifiers would be
Effectively civil servants, pin-striped poets, conspicuously
Cadent special advisers to politicians, private providers
Of public subscribers, robed in crimson vestments, scarlet
Overslops, red surplices, and particularly prized for putting
The rhythm and beat back into labour whenever it threatened
To trip into dirge, to the tempo of their metronomic patterns…
LXXXI
For Cecil Day Lewis, poet-Communist, Communist-poet
(Never quite settled on which descriptor should come first),
‘All genuine poetry’ was schizophrenic in scope and
Purpose, the forming of ‘private spheres out of public chaos’;
Some sculpted out their own spheres of escape, apparently
Infantile fantasies, but actually satirical sanctuaries,
Surrealist countries, undergraduate Gondals and Angrias
After the Brontës’ crinkled-edged chronicles –such as Mortmere,
Weird realm dreamt up by Edward Upward and Christopher
Isherwood, while both still at Cambridge, a quixotic country
Where, as Isherwood furnished, ‘all accepted moral and social
Values were turned upside down and inside out’, peopled by
Perverted grotesques buoyed on schoolboy humour, with names
Like Raynard Moxon and Reverend Welken –echoes of Evelyn
Waugh’s satirical caricatures escaped from his novel
Vile Bodies, the “Bright Young Things” left over from the decadent
Twenties: Nina Blount, Agatha Runcible, Miles Malpractice
And other cack-handed Dickens-esque nomenclature; but
Mortmere was more the work of the anarchic subconscious,
A scissor-cut dualistic catharsis of those brought up
In the picturesque English Nightmare, the ectopic clop
Of willow on the village green, the manic vicar, the grasping
Shadow of his vicarage, scones and cream, tea and entropy…
Tea: brown water of anxiety that made the English race
Go mad through daily china sacraments and rituals –
Madness at breakfast (when we try to think of three possible
Things), madness at elevenses, madness at high tea, madness
At thirteen ‘o’ clock on the dot, sweet, warm, brown madness,
Dun nectar, the liquid mud of Anglo-Saxon thaumaturgy,
Curse of the English ever since the March Hare quarrelled with
Time and the Empire got stuck at six ‘o’ clock, perpetual
Teatime; our island’s beigeing chalk, tea-stained battlements,
So much crockery stacked up after elevenses –but
Our tribe is best at dusk courtesy of chirruping porcelain,
More beastly by far in the middle of the day, not to say
Burnishing Rose Madder in the midday sun when caught
Out abroad in a sunnier foreign clime –bear witness to
Beatrice Gladys “Bea” Lillie’s crimson lips when they spun
Noël Coward’s catchiest aphorism into a purled soprano
In The Third Little Show at New York’s Box Theatre, 1931…
Only mad dogs and Englishmen… Fa-ta-ta-ta-ta…
