“The Strand” Reveals Never-Before-Seen Poem from Raymond Chandler

The 25th-anniversary edition of The Strand Magazine is a special one this year. In typical Strand fashion, the magazine has uncovered lost writing from one of the greats — this time, a poem from crime author Raymond Chandler, who has since been cited as a formative influence on crime writers like Laura Lippman, Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly and Richard Price. 

The poem, “Requiem”, was written around 1955 and has been hidden in the archives of the Bodleian Library in Oxford for decades. As the only poem Chandler ever wrote as an adult, why was it never released?

Andrew Gulli, Managing Editor at The Strand posits a possible explanation. “Chandler wrote this in 1955 after his wife had passed away. There seems to have been a few things he left unpublished during that time including this poem and a short story we published years ago, which was a searing indictment of the healthcare industry.”

The poem itself holds a sentimental and lyrical tone that draws a similar conclusion about Chandler’s grief in the wake of his wife’s death. 

Take this excerpt, for example:

“There is a moment after death, yet hardly a moment,
When the bright clothes hang in the scented closet
And the lost dream fades and slowly fades,
When the silver bottles and the glass and the empty mirror,
And three long hairs in a brush and a folded kerchief,
And the fresh made bed and the fresh, plump pillows
On which no head will lie,
Are all that is left of the long, wild dream.”

The same year Chandler wrote this poem, he tried, and failed, to end his own life. His immeasurable grief could surely not be contained in the familiar and dark cynicism of his detective and crime novels, calling him to a new medium altogether. 

But was one poem enough to capture it all? Or are there more poems from Chandler out there?

“After combing over thousands of pages of his manuscripts, I can safely say in a bittersweet way that this is the final word from Raymond Chandler,” remarks Gulli.