Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems
Page 7
Of weeping birth this citron dawn,
This citron dawn,
A heart breaks through the ice of night
Who is, and bursts a paper kite
That sails the day into a dome
Of joy, and tears, and monotone,
This day maintained: a child was born,
A child was born.
Rainshiver
Rain freezes our senses.
Our gills fill with a drill motion:
Chills the air and stills the billing birds
To shrill not trill as they should
In this daffodil spring.
We till away, killing pests,
Filling the rills with commercial pills.
We will the sownseed to live in spite of
The swill spouting from the sky.
Rain instils our mind with imperilled dampness;
Rain fells our own skilled discipline
In long stiff strides,
Milling up seedsown with our spilling fists.
Rain falls, drips even from frilled shelves
And envelopes; splashing ink on mourning edges,
Overbrimming pools of wet water;
Rain comes streaming down where there is too much
Falling, drips drops, in wet circles on pond;
Duck dives and bank rats, even they hate
The pelting stinging rain
That beats into their heart
Rings of woe on zinc covered roofs,
On rusty baths and pale iron spikes.
Royal Mail
I would see again São Paulo:
The coffee coloured house with its tarmac roof
And spray of tangerine berries.
I would again climb the mountain cable
And see Pernambuco with its dark polished table,
The brilliance of its sky piercing through the trees
Like so much Byzantine glass or clear Grecian frieze.
As we stumble higher strolling gourds and air-plants
Spring from muscoid branch to barnacle wire:
I would see old man should it come my way,
The mahogany pyramids of burnished berries, gay
With surf-like attitudes of men sitting around
In crisp white suits, starch to the ground.
The peacock struts and nets mimicrying butterflies,
And the fazenda shop clinking like ice in an enamel jug
As you open the door. The stench of wine-wood,
Saw-dust, maize flour, pimentos, and basket of birds,
With the ear-tipped ‘Molto bien signorit’ and the hot mood
Blazing from the drooping noon. Outside sweating gourds
Dripping rind and peel; yet inside cool as lemon,
Orange, avocado pear.
While in this damp and stony stare of a village
Such images are unknown:
So would I think upon these things
In the event that someday I shall return to my native surf
And feel again the urgency of sun and soil.
The New World
Memory widens our senses, folds them open:
Ancient seas slip back like iguanas and reveal
Plains of space, free, sky-free, lifting a green tree
on to a great plain.
Heard legend whistling through the waiting jabirú,
Knew the two-fold saying spinning before their eyes
Breaking life like superstition, they too
might become half-crazed.
Staring sitting under the shade of Ombú tree,
Living from the dust: kettles simmer on sticks,
Maté strengthens their day’s work like dew
on hot dry grass.
So the people baking too close fulfilled time,
Bricks became mud walls and the legend flared high,
Shadows broke, flames frowned and bent the sky
proclaiming Indian omens.
Roofs fell clattering in on man and child,
Black framed their faces, from fire not from sun:
While before them land divided announcing
stake peggers’ loud claim.
Death ate their hearts like locusts over a croaking plain,
Fell tears red as fireflies on the rising dust;
Barbed wire fenced them in or fenced them out,
these outcasts of the land.
So the people fled unwanted further on into the land,
On to the Plain of White Ashes where thorns spread
Like the wreath of Christ. Further out on to
the ancient Sea of Rhea.
Ombú turned hollow as it stood alone:
Spiders lifted the lids of their homes and slammed them back
Sorrow set the plovers screaming at the falling
hoofs and feet:
Cinchas bound their eaten hearts: leather sealed their lips;
Ponchos warmed their pumpkin pride: as insects floated,
As windmills grew. Ventevéo! Ventevéo! And further they
strove, the harder not to be seen.
Lost now. No sound or care can revive their ways:
La Plata gambles on their courage, spends too flippantly,
Mocks beauty from the shading tree, mounts a corrugated roof
over their cultured hut.
Argentine Railways
To you who walked so proudly down the line,
Promoting men from engine plates, skilled
Workers from the sheds: the Board soon killed
The cut you had to socialise the ‘decline’.
You, who planned man’s bonus among the whine
And shrill of people on the go; filled
The sleeper’s clock with admiration; drilled
Time in travelling into a close combine.
But now I prefer to think of you set back
Upon the land, with eucalyptus trees
Shading corral from dust: plan as you please
The round hill into a wholesome farm. ‘Their’ lack
To accept your methods receive with ease,
For they will come to that in the end or ‘freeze’.
Xaquixaguana
In the lake of pools
Where icebergs stand firm on the ground,
And refrain to move for beauty of their image,
Five Temples lie wounded on their sides
Each plundered and more progressive than the last.
I speak of the one with the grey-crusted sleepers
Sitting in the splint-blue cave.
Especially he, of the up-side-down burial
With arrows set like buhls in the rib of the wreck:
Who was this white man of Peru?
And what flat burial did he deserve
To stir their sandstone agave? To face emerald sky
And snarling rocks where the sun’s tied up:
Lying stiff among gold filaments and animate clay
Snouting Azrael forms and intricate beads:
Those Huacas spread and exposed under cacti waterbeds,
Green as tunas, weathered with poisoned alizarin darts
Who was this man who stole their store of gold?
Who found down here down Pilcomayo way,
Near lion grass and glass birds sailing the lake,
Who was he, that lies buried at the Haravec’s feet
Aggrieved by this ice and basaltic sheet?
River Plate
The pampas are for ever returning
The orange river pounding the sea,
From high dry plain with tint of tea
La Plata spreads, and churns drowning
The dust from the charcas murmuring
At the bare roots of the Ombú tree:
The pampas are for ever returning
Bright green birds into piranha sea.
Over spare-dust and barbed wire slowly
Cattle die from thirst wounds, returning
Like maté ships shivering, bringing
<
br /> No sound but white bones back to me:
The pampas are for ever returning
Bad bones and dust into an angry sea.
Canzone Benedicto
The bell tolls from umbrella woods:
And we follow with black silk hands
Through round monastery walls to find no one there.
The bees have led us astray:
And on the turning back through death and turpentine halls
We glance tersely at the torturous Stations
Raised by the tall pillars of Rome.
Beyond glass door and circean group of sisters and swine;
Following blue serge and thin button boots;
Passing yellow chair and baskets of endless peel,
We cut our gravel paths and broke through Refectory tables.
From bread and wine interval, nuns of the red medallion
Timed our shoed-exit with glove-stick hands,
And crossed our way with the opulent ways of the Order
So that we, the pale collative faces beat a solemn retreat.
Again past cool black air and caladium altars;
Flicking water and humea into our long white thoughts
Which stretched into veils and caught our hair
On terra-cotta vases held by monandrian palms.
The chimes hastened, echoing our feet on the Aztec mosaic
As we broke light and entered the moist patio,
Its boracic colonnade squared with seraphic blue:
We were there. We were free to talk.
But still to their fury I remained the veronese mask:
The white washed statue.
The calandria in the shade.
Cwmcelyn
Part Five from a longer poem
… mi a glywais lais y pedwerydd anifail yn dywedyd, Tyred, a gwêl.
Ac mi a edrychais; ac wele farch gwelw-las: ac enw yr hwn oedd yn eistedd arno oedd Marwolaeth: ac yr oedd Uffern yn canlyn gyd âg ef. A rhoddwyd iddynt awdurdod ar y bedwaredd ran o’r ddaear, i ladd â chleddyf, ac â marwolaeth, ac â bwystfilod y ddaear.
A phan agorodd efe y bummed sêl, mi a welais dan yr allor eneidiau y rhai a laddesid am air Duw, ac am y dystiolaeth oedd ganddynt.
A hwy a lefasant â llef uchel, gan ddywedyd, Pa hyd, Arglwydd, sanctaidd a chywir, nad ydwyt yn barnu ac yn dïal ein gwaed ni ar y rhai sydd yn trigo ar y ddaear?
A gynau gwynion a roed i bob un o honynt;…
DATGUDDIAD. PENNOD VI
Air white with cold. Cycloid wind prevails.
On ichnolithic plain where no print runs
And winter hardens into plate of ice;
Shoots an anthracite glitter of death
From their eyes – these men shine darkly.
With stiff betrayal, dark suns on pillow
Of snow; but not eclipsed, for out of cauterised
Craters, a conclave of Architects with
Ichnographic plans, shall bridge stronger
Ventricles of faith. They know also
Etonic vows: the abstractions which may arise:
That magnates out of prefabricated
Glass, may build Chromium Cenotaphs –
Work and pay for all! Contract aerodromes
To lift planes where ships once crawled, over
Baleful continents to the Caribbean Crane,
Down, to the Southern Christ of Palms
Back on red competitive lines: chaining
Chinese fields of tungsten: above pack-ice
Snaping like wolves on Siberian shores.
Over walls of boracic and tundra torn wounds,
Darkening ‘peaked’ Fuji-yama, clearing
Cambrian glaciers where xylophone reeds hide
Menhir glaciers and appointed feet.
Out of this hard. Out of this sheet of zinc.
We, by centrifugal force… rose softly…
Faded from blood sight. We, he and I ran
On to a steel escalator, the white
Electric sun drilling down on the cubed ice;
Our cyanite flesh chilled on aluminium
Rail. Growing taller, our demon diminishing
With steep incline. Climbed at gradient
42°; on to a trauma stratus
Where a multitude of birds, each wing
A sunset against a sheet of ice, dipped
And flew throughout our cloth piercing folds
Of pain and fear. Higher through moist
And luminous dust: up breathless to a jungle of
Winedamp, out of gravity and territorial
Sight on to a far outer belt muscling-in
The Earth’s curve. On speeding spirals of air
Sailed ketch and kestrel, fighting propeller,
Swastika wings and grey rubber rafts: such
Evidence reconciliating as
Time and shape floated by on swift moving layer.
Out of it. Out of it. To a ceiling and clarity
Of peace. Sweet white air varied as syllables.
Spray of air fresh, fragrant as beehive glossed
Over with beech. So quiet a terrace to tune-in-to
With prismatic shine on each cell of light:
To laze carelessly in the crown of the sky.
But timeless minds held us victims
To the sour truth. War and responsibility.
He, of Bethlehem treading a campaign
Of clouds, the fleecy cade purring at his side:
Sun, serene-sense, tinting page of his face roan,
Bent over glazed chart and wooden table;
With compass and astronomical calculation,
He, again at my side, pricked lines and projected
Latitudes so that we stood we cared not
How, upside-down over South American canes.
Boots proved cumbersome at the height. Bleak battledress
Irritating as old salvaged reed collar:
Black and gravel wings pinned to his heart,
A grief already told. In such radium
Activity – white starlings – suspended
On string like Calder ‘stills’ – shivered
Like morning stars in the wide open sky.
And I contented in this 4th dimensional state
Passed through, him and the table, pursued
My own work slightly below him. In
Sandals and sunsuit lungs naked to the light,
Sitting on chair of glass with no fixed frame
Leaned to the swift machine threading over twill:
‘Singer’s’ perfect model scrolled with gold,
Chromium wheel and black structure firm on
Mahogany plinth… nails varnished with
Chanel shocking! Ears jewelled: light hand
Tipped with dorcas silver thimble, tracing thin
Aertex edge: slim needle and strong sharp
Thread – Coats’ cotton 48 – trimmings, and metal
Buttons stitched by hand: excelling always as
Soldier shirt finished floated down to earth.
But cold out night. We wrapt our own mystery
Around us; trailed in cerulean mosquito nets,
As kale canopy lifted from cooler zones below.
Pack of stars in full cry icing the heavens
As we were compelled to descend. Disendowed;
By the State. By will of those hankering
After pig standards of gold. The fall was heavy,
Too sudden for our laughter so that we
Took it with us; dragged it slowly down through
Waled skylanes. Shocked Capricorn and Cancer who
Winked to control us like belisha beacons.
Tacked out of our course into opaline dusk.
A huge silence ashiver: Huge Witness dwells:
In Celestial Study to right and left, lucid
Eyes pay tribute, Angel secretaries with
Paper wings (and paper so scarce) dyed mauvescarlet
With chemical rings: spe
ech blue behind aniline minds.
Away from this. Flattery and hypocrisy.
Not even a whisper escaped our lips as we
Continued in sharp descent – old minesweepers
Creaking through boisterous storms, our own God
Within us. Down into xerophilous air, clarion snow
Percolating, oölite flakes warm as
Owl tufts or deciduous leaves falling on
Flesh with the lightness of moths. Without breath
Or bell of joy lurched slipped-slid into icy
Vacuums. Fell out of frozen cylinders. Flew
Earthwards like arctic terns with spangled
Mirrors still on our wings. Colder. Continuous as newsreel
Quadrillion cells spotting the air, stinging
The face like a swarm of bees. Lower. A vitreous green
Paperweight… the sky is greenglaze with snow flying
Upwards zionwards. Such iconic sky bears promise.
Dredging slowly down, veiling shield of sky hard.
Cold. Austere. Tumbled over each other plunged
Into a dark penumbra then through a
Rift as suddenly, the solid stone of earth
Rushed up; hit us hotly as household iron.
Over this maimed and cadaverous globe, the wind
Had streaked each ridge with piercing prongs
Of a curry comb; leaving here and there
A thin sheet of aluminium which shone out
Of the Earth’s crust. Over set currents
Of ice, emerald streams and blue electric lakes
Working simultaneously to purify the
World… down driving down… following the thin
Strokes of mapping pens, stretching a page of
Music over vast terrain. This, and stronger
Network of rails, pylons, and steel installations
The only landmark of our territory…
Down, to this bleak telegraphic planet and solid
Pyramids of canvas. Down, gunner and black
Madonna with heart of tin; surrounded
By fluttering greed of ravens, their
Beaks of bone breaking up the wounds of winter;
Croak: a mad voice sunk down a sink. The attendant
Curlews at the forage edge wearing motheaten
Shawls; shagreen legs brittle as ember twigs.
Pipe, plaintive descant sharpening the shale.
From the ascending stirrup to the sun, down,
Dragged down we descended the slimerot ladders,
Rats withdrawing each foot: rust worn where other
Boots had rung. To the Bay known before,
The warm and stagnant wellshafts raising air
Of putrid flesh sunk in desert sands. Stepped out on to
Blue blaze of snow. Barbed wire. No man of bone.
A placard to the right which concerned us;
Mental Home for Poets. He alone on this