Forgive Me, Sire

Forgive me, Sire, for cheating your intent,
That I, who should command a regiment,
Do amble amiably here, O God,
One of the neat ones in your awkward squad.

The Dirty Little Accuser

Who invited him in? What was he doing here,
That insolent little ruffian, that crapulous lout?
When he quitted a sofa, he left behind him a smear.
My wife says he even tried to paw her about.

What was worse, if, as often happened, we caught him out
Stealing or pinching the maid’s backside, he would leer,
With a cigarette on his lip and a shiny snout,
With a hint: ‘You and I are all in the same galère.’

Yesterday we ejected him, nearly by force,
To go on the parish, perhaps, or die of starvation;
As to that, we agreed, we felt no kind of remorse.

Yet there’s this check on our righteous jubilation:
Now that the little accuser is gone, of course,
We shall never be able to answer his accusation.

Lay

from François Villon

Death, of thy rigour I complain:
Hast ravished my mistress hence,
And wilt not yet show penitence,
But holdest me in swooning pain,
With all my vital forces ta’en.
How did her life give thee offence,
                           Death?

We had one heart between the twain:
If she be dead, it follows thence
That I must die, or in pretence
Live on, like images that feign
                           Death!

A newly revised paperback issue of the first complete edition of Norman Cameron’s poetry. As Jonathan Barker writes in his introduction, it is ‘the product of the shared transatlantic enthusiasm of Warren Hope and myself for the work of a poet whom we both see as unjustly neglected.’ Cameron (1905–53) has never lacked admirers among his fellow poets – Roy Fuller, Geoffrey Grigson, Robert Graves, among others – but since his skilful, moving and quietly memorable poems have not been reprinted since 1957, they have not reached the wider audience which they deserve.

The growing appetite for his work was anticipated by Warren Hope, whose research for the 1985 American edition brought to light thirteen uncollected poems and some translations from Heine and the Czech poet Nezval. In this edition, the poems are followed by selections from his verse translation of Villon; all his miscellaneous verse translations (except those of Rimbaud, which are published by Anvil in a separate volume); and his juvenilia.