! ! Stevie Smith Reading Her Poems

She was not yet really 'known' - but asked to read by this small group of older Jewish refugees and eager youngsters, talent destined for a fame, at the tiny Gaberbocchus Press which did not affect at all the self-contained aloneness that walked up the aisle from door to barely stage and in a clear dry voice neither apology nor hope read her poems that gave a meaning to the new word 'throwaway' - they were her, she read them, threw the invisible sheets away, and if you caught them as you laughed which was easier than crying tears, so be it. Her voice at the poems' end was herself: as if, not waving, no, but drowning, neatly, with a certain acceptance, in the incomprehensibility of life; she read as if when the poem ended you might quickly but quietly rise from your seat and leave, not rudely but because there was nothing more to say