Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems
Page 5
Patrick McGuinness
2005
Obvious errors of spelling and typography have been corrected, spelling and presentation have been made consistent, and some older conventions have been modernised. Poems and Gods with Stainless Ears are presented here as they originally appeared, with Roberts’s own notes at the back of each volume. The editor’s notes are in the conventional place at the back of the book.
The Lynette Roberts papers are held at the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
Notes
1 Though Roberts is little-known, the critical work on her has by and large been insightful. Poetry Wales devoted an invaluable special issue (1983, 19/2) to her, containing essays by Anthony Conran and John Pikoulis, extracts from her autobiography and her correspondence with Roberts Graves. For essays and articles on Roberts, see especially: Tony Conran, ‘Lynette Roberts: War Poet’, in The Cost of Strangeness: Essays on the English Poets of Wales (Llandysul: Gomer, 1983); ‘Lynette Roberts: The Lyric Pieces’ (Poetry Wales, 1983, 19/2); and ‘Lynette Roberts’, Frontiers in Anglo-Welsh Poetry (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,1997); John Pikoulis, ‘Lynette Roberts and Alun Lewis’, (Poetry Wales 1983, 19/2); ‘The Poetry of the Second World War’, in British Poetry 1900–50, ed. Gary Day and Brian Docherty (London: Macmillan, 1995). Nigel Wheale, ‘Lynette Roberts: Legend and Form in the 1940s’, Critical Quarterly (1994, 36/3); ‘“Beyond the Trauma Stratus”: Lynette Roberts’ Gods with Stainless Ears and the Post-War Cultural Landscape’, Welsh Writing in English, vol. 3 (1997). Among poets, her work has been of interest principally to those of an ‘experimental’ or ‘avant-garde’ temper. For a profound and updated engagement with Roberts’s themes and manner, see John Wilkinson’s poem ‘Sarn Helen’, subtitled ‘Homage to Lynette Roberts and for Friends in Swansea’.
2 Lewis’s poem for Roberts was ‘Peace’ in Raiders’ Dawn (1941), an unsettling and oblique poem with a final note of optimism. She told him ‘My poem is real i.e. true of the everyday things I do. Yours is mythical’, and the poetic exchange is all the more poignant for the fact that three years later Lewis would be dead. Alun Lewis’s letters to Roberts and Keidrych Rhys appear in Wales (February/March, 1948, VIII/28). For an account of the friendship between Lynette Roberts and Alun Lewis, see John Pikoulis’s essay in the Poetry Wales special issue on Lynette Roberts. In the same issue Tony Conran’s essay ‘Lynette Roberts: The Lyric Pieces’ discusses Roberts’s connections with the Welsh-language poetic tradition.
3 The Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas, ed. Paul Ferris (London: Dent, 1985), p. 418.
4 Ibid.
5 Quoted in Poetry Wales, Lynette Roberts special issue, p. 14.
6 Keidrych Rhys, The Van Pool and Other Poems (London: Routledge, 1942), p. 9.
7 Collected Letters of Dylan Thomas, p. 419.
8 I am grateful to Wynn Thomas for pointing this out to me.
9 Village Dialect, (Carmarthen: Druid Press, 1944), p. 12. In July 1944 Dylan Thomas wrote ‘Lynette, who cannot read Welsh, is revising the standard nineteenth-century book on Welsh prosody, and also annotating a work on the hedgerows of Carmarthenshire. I hope she becomes famous & that they will name an insect after her’ (Collected Letters, p. 518).
10 Unpublished typescript, untitled and dated 2 September 1943.
11 Nigel Wheale, ‘Lynette Roberts: Legend and Form in the 1940s’, p. 5.
12 Village Dialect, p. 24.
13 The same raid was witnessed by the artist Arthur Giardelli who comments on the mismatch between Roberts’s poem (which he describes as having the feel of a Paul Nash painting) and the reality it both works on and climbs free of: ‘It isn’t like my experience at all […] exceedingly dramatic but to me about complete devastation: fires still burning, smoke, the dash of water out of a pipe hour after hour. […] It is a superb poem, but she’s using her intellect, her imagination and vision’ (Arthur Giardelli, Paintings Constructions Relief Sculptures: Conversations with Derek Shiel (Bridgend: Seren, n.d.), pp. 68–9.
14 Keith Douglas, ‘How to Kill’, The Complete Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 2000), p. 119.
15 ‘Frostwork and the Mud Vision’ The Cambridge Quarterly (2002, 31/1), p. 98, a review of Keith Tuma’s Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
16 ‘Simplicity of the Welsh Village’, The Field, 7 July 1945, p. 8.
17 Ibid., p. 9.
18 Nigel Wheale, ‘Beyond the Trauma Stratus’, p. 99.
19 ‘The Welsh Dragon, Times Literary Supplement, 29 August 1952, p. xxxi.
20 Poetry Wales Lynette Roberts special issue, p. 82.
21 Ibid., p. 84
22 The Eliot-Roberts correspondence dates from summer 1942 to December 1953, and is unpublished.
23 Anthony Conran, Frontiers in Anglo-Welsh Poetry, p. 166.
POEMS
1944
Poem from Llanybri
If you come my way that is…
Between now and then, I will offer you
A fist full of rock cress fresh from the bank
The valley tips of garlic red with dew
Cooler than shallots, a breath you can swank
In the village when you come. At noon-day
I will offer you a choice bowl of cawl
Served with a ‘lover’s’ spoon and a chopped spray
Of leeks or savori fach, not used now,
In the old way you’ll understand. The din
Of children singing through the eyelet sheds
Ringing smith hoops, chasing the butt of hens;
Or I can offer you Cwmcelyn spread
With quartz stones from the wild scratchings of men:
You will have to go carefully with clogs
Or thick shoes for it’s treacherous the fen,
The East and West Marshes also have bogs.
Then I’ll do the lights, fill the lamp with oil,
Get coal from the shed, water from the well;
Pluck and draw pigeon with crop of green foil
This your good supper from the lime-tree fell.
A sit by the hearth with blue flames rising,
No talk. Just a stare at ‘Time’ gathering
Healed thoughts, pool insight, like swan sailing
Peace and sound around the home, offering
You a night’s rest and my day’s energy.
You must come – start this pilgrimage
Can you come? – send an ode or elegy
In the old way and raise our heritage.
The Shadow Remains
To speak of everyday things with ease
And arrest the mind to a simpler world
Where living tables are stripped of a cloth;
Of wood on which I washed, sat at peace:
Cooked duck, shot on an evening in peacock cold:
Studied awhile: wrote: baked bread for us both.
But here by the hearth with leisured grace
I prefer to speak of the vulgar clock that drips
With the falling of rain: woodbine tips, and yarrow
Spills, lamp, packet of salt, and twopence of mace
That sit on the shelf edged with a metal strip,
And below, brazier fire that burns our sorrow,
Dries weeping socks above on the rack: that knew
Two angels pinned to the wall – again two.
Plasnewydd
You want to know about my village.
You should want to know even if you
Don’t want to know about my village.
My village is very small. You could
Pass it with a winning gait. Smile.
They stand in corners plain talking,
Flick the cows passing down our way.
The women – that’s the men,
Pull their aprons over their heads.
They put another around their hips,
Blue sprigged white… so…
Another to cover the o
ne underneath
Pity to spoil: ‘Best Hundredweight of
Cow Cakes’: sacking stitched and homemade.
Now we are used to such things
Never laugh at their ways for
Our own asides carry a larger tale.
We sit and sit in a cornered rut
We pine for our love to thin the rhythm
From out of our hearts
WAR. ‘There’s no sense in it.
Just look at her two lovely eyes
Look at those green big big eyes
And the way she hangs her tail.
Like a weasel. Ferret. Snowball
Running away on the breast of a hill.
WAR. There’s no sense in it
For us simple people
We all get on so well.
Hal-e-bant.
The cows are on the move.
I must be off on the run:
Hal-e-bant. pussy drwg.
Hal-e-bant Fan Fach
Hal-e-bant for the day is long
We must strengthen it:
Ourselves:
To the cows
Fetch them in.’
Low Tide
Every waiting moment is a fold of sorrow
Pierced within the heart.
Pieces of mind get torn off emotionally,
In large wisps
Like a waif I lie, stillbound to action:
Each waiting hour I stare and see not,
Hum and hear not, nor, care I how long
The lode mood lasts.
My eyes are raw and wide apart
Stiffened by the salt bar
That separates us.
You so far;
I at ease at the hearth
Glowing for a welcome
From your heart.
Each beating moment crosses my dream
So that wise things cannot pass
As we had planned.
Woe for all of us: supporting those
Who like us fail to steel their hearts,
But keep them wound in clocktight rooms,
Ill found. Unused. Obsessed by time.
Each beating hour
Rings false.
Raw Salt on Eye
Stone village, who would know that I lived alone:
Who would know that I suffered a two-edged pain,
Was accused of spycraft to full innate minds with loam,
Was felled innocent, suffered a stain as rare as Cain’s.
Amelia Phillips, who would know that I lived lonely,
Who would know old shrew that your goose’s wing
Did more for me than the plucked asides of daily
Nods: yet I had need of both to prove my sting.
Cold grate, who would know that I craved my love;
Who would know the pain fell twice; could realise
My loss. Only the coloured cries of stars can prove
The cold rise of dawn – understand and advise.
White village, I lost my love. – He went floating
Brushing the wet seas. He stood like a soldier trapped
And thought of me but could not speak. Fighting
Hard he stood, freeing nations the old enemy cramped.
Hard people, will wash up now, bake bread and hang
Dishcloth over the weeping hedge. I can not raise
My mind, for it has gone wandering away with hum
I shall not forget; and your ill-mannered praise.
The Circle of C
I walk and cinder bats riddle my cloak
I walk to Cwmcelyn ask prophets the way.
‘There is no way they cried crouched on the hoarstone rock
And the Dogs of Annwn roared louder than of late.’
‘Red fever will fall with the maytide blossom
Fever as red as your cloak. Woe to all men.
Food-ties will mellow in the bromine season
Then willowed peace may be brought.’
But what of my love I cried
As a curlew stabbed the sand:
And we cut for the answer. They said
‘He would come not as he said he would come
But later with sailing ice, war glass and fame:
Grieve not it is better so.’
I left the Bay, wing felled and bogged
Kicked the shale despondent and green
Heard Rosie say lace curtained in clogs
I’ve put a Yule log on your grate.
Lamentation
To the village of lace and stone
Came strangers. I was one of these
Always observant and slightly obscure.
I roamed the hills of bird and bone
Rescuing bees from under the storm:
Five hills rocked and four homes fell
The day I remember the raid so well.
Eyes shone like cups chipped and stiff
The living bled the dead lay in their grief
Cows, sheep, horses, all had got struck
Black as bird wounds, red as wild duck.
Dead as icebone breaking the hedge.
Dead as soil failing of good heart.
Dead as trees quivering with shock
At the hot death from the plane.
O the cold loss of cattle
With their lovely big eyes.
The emptiness of sheds,
The rick stacked high.
The breast of the hills
Will soon turn grey
As the dogs that grieve
And I that fetched them in:
For the good gates are closed
In the yard down our way.
‘But my loss. My loss is deeper
Than Rosie’s of Chapel House Farm
For I met death before birth:
Fought for life and in reply lost
My own with a cold despair.
I hugged the fire around the hearth
To warm the beat and wing
Yet knew the symbol when it came
Lawrence had found the same.
I threw the starling hard as stone
Into the breaking earth…’
Dead as icebone breaking the hedge
Dead as soil failing of good heart.
Dead as trees quivering with shock
At the hot death from the plane.
O the salt loss of life
Her lovely green ways.
The emptiness of crib
And big stare of night.
The breast of the hills
Yield a bucket of milk:
But the crane no longer cries
With the round birds at dawn
For the home has been shadowed
A storm of sorrow drowned the way.
Broken Voices
Here a perfect people set – on red rock,
White and grey as gull met
Pure to plough, each prince hamlet
Of slate strong as rate ticket.
Now one mouth twisting twelve tongues – of the flock
Unlocked the padlocked lungs:
Slung a trail of steaming dung
Blocking path of two not sung.
Stained virgin village with dearth – for the mock
Like strumpet jet, rocked mirth
And farmer: brought no more worth
Than winding sheet of sour berth.
When gossip kneads to grave crust, – with feared shock
Runs into fox of dust,
Then shall the two minds discussed
Remain bold with new sung trust.
Earthbound
I, in my dressing gown,
At the dressing table with mirror in hand
Suggest my lips with accustomed air, see
The reflected van like lipstick enter the village
When Laura came, and asked me if I knew.
We had known him a little, yet long enough:
Drinking in all rooms, mild and bitter,
Laughing and careless under the washing-line tree.
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The day so icy when we gathered the moss,
The frame made from our own wire and cane;
Ivy in perfect scale, roped with fruit from the same root:
And from the Pen of Flowers those which had survived the frost.
We made the wreath standing on the white floor;
Bent each to our purpose wire to rose-wire;
Pinning each leaf smooth,
Polishing the outer edge with the warmth of our hands.
The circle finished and note thought out,
We carried the ring through the attentive eyes of the street:
Then slowly drove by Butcher’s Van to the ‘Union Hall’.
We walked the greaving room alone,
Saw him lying in his upholstered box,
Violet ribbon carefully crossed,
And about his sides bunches of wild thyme.
No one stirred as we offered the gift. No one drank there again.
Spring
The full field.
The stiff line of trees.
The antiseptic grass – dew shining.
The green,
Spraying from shorn hedgerows.
Sodium earth dug hard;
Bound by the fury of the earth’s lower crust.
Black bending cattle nose to the warmth.
Pebble sheep pant to a lighter tune.
To high air sustained.
To high springing air.
To blue-life-mist rising from the flaming earth.
On aconite shade and xerophyte fern
Dull sheep lie:
That heat ‘Lamb’s Ear’.
That heat farmer’s head.
That heat rick and roar,
Into a raging flame.
From innermost earth.
From fire underground.
From fire out of sight.
From rising fire in the sky
To Spring.
All glory,
And faith in mankind.
Rhode Island Red
Spade jackets and tapping jackdaws on boles of wood,
Song of joy I sing.
Prim-pied under sky full of fresh livelihood,
Smile for eye of man.
Outhouses sweet with air stand whitened by the flood,
Of sun blanching spring.
In plate green meadows sheepdog and farmer brood,
On galvanised can.