Here you will find the Poem Deeply Morbid of poet Stevie Smith
Deeply morbid deeply morbid was the girl who typed the letters Always out of office hours running with her social betters But when daylight and the darkness of the office closed about her Not for this ah not for this her office colleagues came to doubt her It was that look within her eye Why did it always seem to say goodbye? Joan her name was and at lunchtime Solitary solitary She would go and watch the pictures In the National Gallery All alone all alone This time with no friend beside her She would go and watch the pictures All alone. Will she leave her office colleagues Will she leave her evening pleasures Toil within a friendly bureau Running later in her leisure? All alone all alone Before the pictures she seemed turned to stone. Close upon the Turner pictures Closer than a thought may go Hangs her eye and all the colours Leap into a special glow All for her, all alone All for her, all for Joan. First the canvas where the ocean Like a mighty animal With a wicked motion Leaps for sailors' funeral Holds her painting. Oh the creature Oh the wicked virile thing With its skin of fleck and shadow Stretching tightening over him. Wild yet caputured wild yet caputured By the painter, Joan is quite enraptured. Now she edges from the canvas To another loved more dearly Where the awful light of purest Sunshine falls across the spray, There the burning coasts of fancy Open to her pleasure lay. All alone all alone Come away come away All alone. Lady Mary, Lady Kitty The Honourable Featherstonehaugh Polly Tommy from the office Which of these shall hold her now? Come away come away All alone. The spray reached out and sucked her in It was hardly a noticed thing That Joan was there and is not now (Oh go and tell young Featherstonehaugh) Gone away, gone away All alone. She stood up straight The sun fell down There was no more of London Town She went upon the painted shore And there she walks for ever more Happy quite Beaming bright In a happy happy light All alone. They say she was a morbid girl, no doubt of it And what befell her clearly grew out of it But I say she's a lucky one To walk for ever in that sun And as I bless sweet Turner's name I wish that I could do the same.