What the Goose-Girl Said About the Dean

By Edith Sitwell 1887–1964 Edith Sitwell

Turn again, turn again,

Goose Clothilda, Goosie Jane.

Bright wooden waves of people creak

From houses built with coloured straws

Of heat; Dean Pasppus’ long nose snores

Harsh as a hautbois, marshy-weak.

The wooden waves of people creak

Through the fields all water-sleek.

And in among the straws of light

Those bumpkin hautbois-sounds take flight.

Whence he lies snoring like the moon

Clownish-white all afternoon.

Beneath the trees’ arsenical

Sharp woodwind tunes; heretical—

Blown like the wind’s mane

(Creaking woodenly again).

His wandering thoughts escape like geese

Till he, their gooseherd, sets up chase,

And clouds of wool join the bright race

For scattered old simplicities.

from Coterie, 1919

Biography

In the introduction to The Canticle of the Rose British poet Dame Edith Sitwell wrote: "At the time I began to write, a change in the direction, imagery and rhythms in poetry had become necessary, owing to the rhythmical flaccidity, the verbal deadness, the dead and expected patterns, of some of the poetry immediately preceding us." Her early work was often experimental, creating melody, using striking conceits, new rhythms, and . . .

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