Stevie: The Movie

12. "Come Death"

Now for the last time-the final refrain-the train enters a tunnel that is completely black. We stay in that blackness for a few interminable moments listening to a funereal music. When we come out again Trevor Howard is standing in the house with the furniture covered in white sheets. He recounts how Stevie's sister Molly suffered a severe stroke which left her helpless. Stevie went to help and fell ill herself. She wrote to an old friend from the hospital.

Stevie's voice precedes her, reciting the letter, "Dear John . . ." The camera slides slowly down to Aunt's chair where Stevie is relating the story of her illness to a good friend. I know this letter well -it's the last one Smith wrote-but I was nonetheless bowled over by Jackson reciting it entire, by Stevie's account of her illness, her ironic laughter, her sudden inability to speak or read properly She goes through to the end, but near the bottom of the letter, Jackson imitates the great problem Stevie had in speaking correctly at the last. She writes with characteristic self mockery: "I'm not sure I'll be very bright, ha-ha, as so often I cannot speech properly I scramble velly velly well." With tremendour difficulty, Jackson bites out, she stutters twice on the word "Dooo," "Dooo," calmly gathers herself and finishes: "Do forgive me dear John if I have been already over and over this again and again. I hope you are beautifully happy. Love, Stevie."

I've always been moved by this letter, but by the time Stevie had signed off I was pretty much beside myself. I could scarcely see, I was shaking so much I almost couldn't hear the Man returning to declare the inevitable-how Stevie had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and in the end lost the power of speech. In truth, by the end of the film I was sobbing so hard that afterwards my somewhat bemused wife had to walk me around the parking lot for twenty minutes or so to becalm me. I was flooded with grief.

After he finishes, the Man goes back to the parlor door. He pauses and surveys the room for one last time. Then he turns off the light and leaves. There's one last shadowy shot of the Lion Aunt's-chair, which had also become Stevie's chair.

Stevie was 69 when she wrote her last poem. Trevor Howard recites "Come Death (a)" with great dignity. It's deeply fitting that the last words of the film are the words of Stevie's final poem. They fill the mind, the theater, with their faithful summons, their fatal timely music. I was haunted when I first read them so many years ago, I was inconsolable when I first heard them in Stevie. I am still. Yet, in the end, Stevie Smith found at last the peace she had so desperately longed for and needed. She had crossed to the other side. But at least on our side, one hopes, she had joined the company of lasting poets, the greeting figures.

EDWARD HIRSCH'S recent books include How To Read a Poem and Fall in love with Poetry (Harcourt Brace) and Responsive Reading (Poets on Poetry series of The University of Michigan Press).

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Jul/Aug 2000
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