Welcome back to The Dedy Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Stevie Smith. She was born Florence Margaret Smith, and she lived from 1902 to 1971.

She was an English poet and novelist. And the poem that I'm going to read today is

called Black March. It goes like this. I have a friend at the end of the world. His name is a

breath of fresh air. He's dressed in gray chiffon. At least I think it is chiffon. It has a peculiar look like smoke.

It wraps him round. It blows out of place. It conceals him. I have not seen his face.

But I have seen his eyes. They are as pretty and bright as raindrops on black twigs in

March. And heard him say,

I am a breath of fresh air for you, a change by and by.

Black March, I call him, because of his eyes being like March raindrops on black twigs.

Such a pretty time when the sky behind black twigs can be seen stretched out in one

uninterrupted Cambridge blue as cold as snow. But this friend, whatever new names I give him,

is an old friend. He says, whatever names you give me, I am, a breath of fresh air, a change for you.

My understanding is that Stevie Smith wrote this poem just a few months before she died at the age of

69 of a brain tumor, which she suffered from for a little while.

I've been trying to decide if it changes the way, if that knowledge changes the way I think about this poem. Does it for you? I'd love to hear about that from you.

I wonder, you know, I can't help but wonder, I suppose, if she's talking about her illness,

maybe even about or to the tumor.

Because there are certainly all kinds of references to the end.

I mean, the first two lines, I have a friend at the end.

I have a friend at the end of the world.

His name is a breath of fresh air. She has all these great plays on words, plays on ideas.

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