Poetry was not new to Chandler, although he had not dabbled in it in many years. “He was fond of poetry and had a poem published in his school newspaper at 17,” Gulli said. But for the bulk of his life, he did not write any poetry.
Chandler did not start writing the detective stories for which he was known until 1933, when he was 44, having previously been a civil servant and an oil executive.
The poem is about 30 lines long. “At times, it reads like a love letter to his wife,” Cissy, who died a year before it was written, Gulli said.
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 poem “was part of a stash of works from when he was old and depressed and ill,” Gulli said. “To me, owing to the fact his life went into free fall after she passed away, I’m looking at the work of somebody who had a very difficult time at letting go.”
Chandler’s Marlowe detective novels included “The Big Sleep” (1939), which was made into a movie with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall seven years later, and “The Long Goodbye” (1953).
Forgotten works by famous authors turn up occasionally, sometimes to great fanfare. Unearthed works have included lost novels by Walt Whitman, found in 2017, and Alexandre Dumas, found in 2005.
