The poems of Stevie Smith (1902-1971) remind me of those optical tricks like the witch illusion, that shifts as you look at it between hag and young girl. This poem, for example â is it eccentric to the point of daftness, or is it a very original, tender love lyric? I never quite make up my mind, but one way or another it has put a hook into my memory.
I Remember
It was my bridal night I remember,
An old man of seventy-three
I lay with my young bride in my arms,
A girl with t.b.
It was wartime, and overhead
The Germans were making a particularly heavy raid on Hampstead.
What rendered the confusion worse, perversely
Our bombers had chosen that moment to set out for Germany.
Harry, do they ever collide?
I do not think it has ever happened,
Oh my bride, my bride.
Stevie Smith
David Sutton 
Hi David, this is a favourite poem of mine as well, but there are two lines missing from the version shown above. The two lines, after ‘The Germans were making a particularly heavy raid on Hampstead’, should be ‘What rendered the confusion worse, perversely / Our bombers had chosen that moment to set out for Germany’. The two sets of bombers never colliding, I’m guessing, is a metaphor for their relationship and generational difference. I totally agree that Stevie Smith’s poems put a hook into your memory and you can’t always be sure why. And congratulations on your very impressive list of publications – Chatto & Windus and Peterloo Poets, very distinguished. You may not be David Sutton, the leader of Reading Council or David Sutton the footballer as you say in your introduction, but your achievements are the ones I’m most impressed by.
Ah, thanks for that, have updated the post. Makes a little more sense now! Glad you like the site.
The German bombers have got lost (because they’re bombing Hampstead not an industrial target). The old man and the girl have also both got lost (and ended up in each other’s arms)?
You may be right about the German bombers, I don’t know enough about the potential value of Hampstead as a military target to comment, but I suspect Stevie Smith wasn’t really thinking that way and just chose it for the rhyme with ‘overhead’. But I can’t see any suggestion that the old man and the girl have got lost and just happened to meet: they have just got married and are presumably at home or in a hotel.
Sorry I should have been clearer. For the old man and girl I meant “lost” = “unable to find one’s way in life” or perhaps “unable to understand or to cope with a situation”.
Right, I see what you mean. Yes, I imagine a lot of lost souls came together in the long dark night of those times.