Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems

by Lynette Roberts

  Isotonic plain: against a jingle of Generals

  And Cabinet Directors determined a

  Stand. Declared a Faith. Entered Foreign

  Field like a plantagenet King: his spirit

  Gorsefierce: hands like perfect quatrains.

  Green spindle tears seep out of closed lids….

  Mourn murmuring… remembering my brother:

  His Cathedral mind in Bedlam. Sign and

  Lettering, black grail of quavering curves.

  Distrained… mallowfrail… turned to where.

  But today which is tomorrow.

  Salt spring from frosted sea filters palea light

  Raising tangerine and hard line of rind on the

  Astringent sky. Catoptric on waterice he of deep love

  Frees dragon from the glacier glade,

  Sights death fading into chilblain ears.

  Notes on Legend and Form

  The Circle of C

  Dogs of Annwn: The ghosts of dogs, heard and seen in the sky. Invariably connected with Hell and Death omens. They appear in early triads, and in the first story of the Mabinogion, (Pwyll Prince of Dyved). The legend is no doubt associated with Sirius and the third sea-track of the Phoenicians which may have guided those people to our shore: with Kerberos: and later to emerge as ‘Cŵn Ebrill’, when curlews crying at night are said to hunt for the souls of the dead. I have used this image as an interpretation of the raiders droning over estuary and hill; their stiff and ghostly flight barking terror into the hearts of the villagers.

  Broken Voices

  An attempt to apply the strict form of the Welsh englyn to the English language. As far as I know Robert Graves, at the age of thirteen, is the only other poet to have attempted this. Here is an example of englynion by R. Williams Parry, from ‘In Memoriam: Morwr’:

  Y Tom gwylaidd, twymgalon, – sy’n aros

  Yn hir yn yr eigion:

  Mor oer yw’r marw yr awron

  Dan li’r dŵr, dan heli’r don.

  O ryfedd dorf ddiderfysg – y meirwon

  A gwymon yn gymysg.

  Parlyrau’r perl, erwau’r pysg,

  Yw bedd disgleirdeb addysg.

  Fifth of the Strata

  Halkin: a village which was submerged near St Ismael, Towy Estuary, about 1606.

  Crossed and Uncrossed

  For the form in this poem and that of ‘The New World’ I should like to make acknowledgements to Professor George Thomson: and in particular for the analysis in his ‘Book on Greek Metres’ of the third and extended line of the sapphic stanzas.

  Orarium

  Streanaeshalch: Whitby, where Caedmon’s monastery once stood.

  Hebankuningas: old Saxon ‘the heavenly kings’ quoted from an MS found in the Vatican Library, and now believed to be the original passage of Caedmon’s ‘Genesis’ from which the English poem in the book of ‘Anglo-Saxon Poetry’ was taken. In this poem I have tried to revive an echo of the rhythm and syntax:… ‘not is the Kingdom of Heaven like to such flames; this was of all lands the loveliest, that we two here through our Lord’s grace have might… where thou to that one not heard, who for us two this calamity has decreed. In that we two the ruler’s word have violated…’

  Royal Mail

  Mimicrying: from the n. mimicry. Here used as a verb, to convey the meaning of both sorrow and mimicking. The butterfly, brazilian blue, is caught by waving a transparent net of peacock blue attached to a long slender pole. This deceives it into the belief that there are other butterflies flitting about on the outer edge of the wood so that it is easily attracted and caught. The commercial use made of their wings; and the fact that ‘certain members of the Lepidoptera possess a capacity for sound production’ (A.D. Imms, MA, DSc) permitted me to take this liberty.

  The New World

  Jabirú: stork.

  Ombú: botanically a plant: but, to all outside appearances a tree. The fruit resembles white mistletoe berries, the trunk is hollow, and the branches spread and hang like old and young English Oaks. It is the only covering of shade which grows and spreads naturally on the Pampas. There are two legends connected with it. That which W.H. Hudson has dealt with: and the second explained to me at the Convent of the Sacred Heart… where he or she who sits under its shade will eventually become crazy.

  Ventevéo: an evil and much feared bird whose call, like the human voice, draws men deeper and deeper into the jungle from where they seldom return. The bird, perching high on the tree at night, penetrates the conscience of the people… come I see you… come I see you. It is said to be under the command of the devil; and its light frame of bones a receptacle for the departed souls of sinners, who unable to find peace, return to flit about restlessly on the earth.

  Xaquixaguana

  Lake of pools: and lion grass: are literal translations of the Patagonian lakes, Nahuel Huapi and Traful.

  Sun tied up: Inca idiom from the Quinchua language.

  Huaca: consecrated objects preserved with the dead; transferred to the Spanish language and now connected with any superstition attached to a small possession or particular object.

  Haravec: Quinchua Language, the tribal poet, chronicler.

  River Plate

  Piranha: fish which attack cattle and human beings in large shoals and eat them alive. When cattle have to swim across the river, the drovers (peones) usually send over the poorer beasts first, so that if a shoal of piranha are present, they will attack and be absorbed by these, while the healthier herds swim across in safety.

  Cwmcelyn

  Pronounced Coom-kel-in, meaning ‘The Valley of Holly’. Quotation in Welsh from Revelation ch: VI, v. 7–11.

  GODS WITH STAINLESS EARS

  A Heroic Poem

  1951

  This Poem is dedicated to Dr Edith Sitwell

  A glyweisti a gant Avaon

  Vab Taliesin, gerdd gyfion,

  Ni chel grudd gystudd calon.

  Brân a gant chwedl ar uwchder

  Derwen uwch deuffrwd aber,

  Trech deall na grymusder.

  Gwna y goreu ym mhob angen,

  O’r peth fo’n dy berchen,

  Gwell no dim gwasgawd brwynen.

  CATTWG DDOETH A’I CANT

  Preface

  This poem was written over a period of two years, 1941–3. Not liking varied metre forms in a long poem, short-lipped lyrics interspersed with heavy marching strides, and not feeling too comfortable within the strict limits of the heroic couplet (wanting elbow room and breathing space), I decided to use the same structure throughout, changing only the rhythm, texture, and tone internally. The use of congested words, images, and certain hard metallic lines are introduced with deliberate emphasis to represent a period of muddled and intense thought which arose out of the first years of conflict, e.g. Factory hands and repetitive lines re-occur with the same movement as with a machine. For this I adapted the villanelle (see page [47]). Towards the third year of war, clear, cold, and austere sight is regained, and I have tried to control the stanzas in the fifth part of this poem under these conditions. The subject is universal, and the tragedy one of too many. Here I would add that my own, though part may be expressed, is outside the page.

  The background is similar to any rural village: only the surface culture is superimposed or altogether distinct. The sentences at the end of the book are to pierce any obscurity which may arise owing to the isolation of localised folklore; or to make known the legends which belong to this particular part of the world.

  Finally, when I wrote this poem, the scenes and visions ran before me like a newsreel. The galley sheets on which I wrote the first draft may be partly responsible for this occurrence. But the poem was written for filming, especially Part V, where the soldier and his girl walk in fourth dimension among the clouds and visit the various outer strata of our planet.

  LYNETTE ROBERTS

  The Caravan

  Laugharne

  15th November 1949

  PART I


  A synnasant oll, ac a ammheuasant, gan ddywedyd y naill wrth y llall, Beth a all hyn fod?

  Ac eraill, gan watwar, a ddywedasant, Llawn o win melus ydynt.

  YR ACTAU. PENNOD II

  ARGUMENT

  The poem opens with a bay wild with birds and somewhat secluded from man. And it is in front, or within sight of this bay that the whole action takes place: merging from its natural state into a supernatural tension within the first six stanzas. War changes its contour. Machine-gun is suggested by the tapping of a woodpecker which gives out the identity of the gunner and provides his nationality, ‘a dragon of wings’. Soldiers and armoured corps arrive: military parade and propaganda: factory workers and fatigues. The rural village described within view of this estuary where soldiers wander during the short hours of their leave. The gunners in action, and of one in particular. He, belonging to a Welsh regiment reading a bill by gunlight, and a letter from his girl in which she tells him they are to expect a child. Night falls, and with it comes the wrecking of a plane.

  Today the same tide leans back, blue rinsing bay,

  With new beaks scissoring the air, a care-away

  Cadence of sight and sound, poets and men

  Rediscovering them. Saline mud

  Siltering, wet with marshpinks, fresh as lime stud

  Whitening fields, gulls and stones attending them;

  Curlews disputing coverts pipe back: stem

  Plaintive legs deep in the ironing edge, that

  Outshines the shale, a railway line washed flat,

  Or tin splintered from a crab-green cave.

  This is Saint Cadoc’s Day. All this Saint Cadoc’s

  Estuary: and that bell tolling, Abbey paddock.

  Sunk. – Sad as ancient monument of stone.

  Trees vail, exhale cyprine shade, widowing

  Homeric hills, green pinnacles of bone.

  Escaping from these, tomb and cave, quagmires

  Migrate; draw victim eyes with lustre sheen, suck

  Confervoid residue from gillette veins: who talk

  Now yield, calling others, those who walk

  From Llanstephan, Llangain, and Llanybri.

  No watereyes squinting or too near madness

  Could fail such a trek. In this same old soddenness

  In deep corridor graves culverts open; their

  Gates kedged in mud, preening feathered air

  Elucidating shapes flecked with woolglints

  And small affiliated tares. – So walk swiftly by,

  For today, pridian, tears ravens wings to grate

  The bay, and John Roberts covered with ligustrum,

  Always sanitary and discreet, rows to and fro from

  Bell house to fennel, floating quietly on the tide.

  In fear of fate, flying into land Orcadian birds pair

  And peal away like praying hands; bare

  Aluminium beak to clinic air; frame

  Soldier lonely whistling in full corridor train,

  Ishmaelites wailing through the windowpane,

  O the cut of it, woe sharp on the day

  Scaled in blood, the ten-toed woodpecker,

  A dragon of wings 1 6 2 0 B 6

  4 punctuates machine-gun from the quarry pits:

  Soldiers, tanks, lorry make siege on the bay.

  Freedom to boot. CONCLAMATION. COMPUNCTION.

  Kom-pungk’-shun: discomforts of the mind deride

  Their mood. Birds on the stirrups of the waterbride

  Flush up, and out of time a tintinnabulation

  Of voice and feather fall in and out of the ocean sky.

  A sanctuary taken – trenched underfoot.

  For today, today, the simple bay pined for

  Out of reach. The atmospheric bogfoot

  Out of season: culverts close their gate,

  Machine sets against clay; irons a new uniform.

  Trees crisp with Maeterlinck blue, screen

  Submarine suns and baskets of bees: but

  Men nettled with pie-powdered feet, angry

  As rooks on their pernickety beds ‘training

  For another Cattraeth’ said Evans shop.

  DISSIMILAR. DISSUNDERED. CRANCH-CRAKE CRANCH-CRAKE

  ASHIVER. ANHUNGERED ANHELATION.

  CERAUNIC CLOUDS CRACK IN THEIR BRAIN.

  Who was to be ring carrier for Jerrymandering

  Gerontocracy. The officer yellow with argyria?

  Soldiers seldom suffered from this; for silver

  Scarcely smoothed their palm. CONGRIEVED. CONSTRAINED.

  CONDEMNED. Subversive (?) for humanity blast this

  And much else besides. Hell would chill a chitter

  Chatter at the sight of their conflowing misery.

  SHUN. Father Precipice of Denbigh Rock,

  Mother Mild of Pembroke Streams, Have mercy on.

  Cantation us to shoal deep winter.

  Men fall to arms. Men stemmed to die

  For the century. Then leap fast to the bone

  Take wailing bayonets from the ice of wound.

  Emblaze your handrails. Men fall to arms.

  Men purred to fight – each other. So can we foresee

  Death. Set each life against time. Jagged bitterns:

  Gradgrinds all. – Now we ruined in life, bound

  For detention in field, again build on lime

  And rubble. To what age can this be compared?

  Men slave, spit and spade. Glean life pure.

  Accelerate oxidised roads. Drill new hearts and hearths.

  Impale the money-goaders’ palisade. And you

  Of acetated minds, workers with xantheine

  Faces, revolutionise your land; holding

  The simple measures of life in your hand,

  Remembering navies and peacocks never sail

  Together in the aftermaths of disaster.

  Into euclidian cubes grid air is planed.

  Propellers scudding up grit and kerosene, braid

  Hulls waled 5 miles hollow, spidering each man stark

  On steelweb, hammering in rivets ambuscade

  Interrupted by sirens screaming tirade.

  With machine-strength wearing blinkers and mask,

  Will of iron moulding surface to brain chained:

  While below in well shafts soldiers squat and cark,

  Shell and peel pods and spuds: girders craned;

  Into euclidian cubes tempered air is planed.

  The brown paper parcels of sappers who ask,

  Shelling and peeling: ‘How’s Jane to-day?’ Barricade

  Against blast and red-hot ingots; clatch

  Of ricocheting wheels – hell’s dim decade

  Interrupted by sirens, screaming tirade.

  Where each day ingrained is a chained task,

  A clatter of clogs, winding of nerves: Fatigues

  Thinning into vocal farms, war-limed grey,

  Stately as battleships heeled to cove: there forced

  Into euclidian cubes carol air is planed.

  When daily the water trudge with battering can,

  Striding out of snail from sprockets of kale;

  Where tractors, carts like nasturiums crack

  The windowpane; to rattle of boiling buckets,

  Sleeve of plane rippling over hedge:

  To each striped tidy plot aproned women work,

  Spadeing clay and coal dust into ‘pele’ jet. To them

  To iron bedsteads; kitchens farms cut open

  With grates. To calico; village scintillating

  Like mothball white on a hill: cresting cascades

  And red rock, throwing out a shower of birds,

  Woodcutters, and harrowing of gulls. Where

  Women titans are weathervanes who fetch

  In the cows who wander the valley prints

  Greening the squares of their eyes. To men

  Ploughing strig and stubble: near geese full of

  White ‘airs’ crisping out their quills,
whose

  Eyes and ears surrounded with orange cord

  Detect and hear the running pads of spiders;

  Or better round the slow-slipping dairy-roof

  Where rabbits hang punched on the door. To chink

  Of ceramic jugs glazed with the lead of years,

  Brass and blue glister under paraffin pools

  By which everything rubied glows, baize and lace

  Curtained to night; intrinsic to seal light

  Crouched black on summer sills. Until the watersky

  Of dawn flickers a sail-wash shimmering aquamarine

  Into TB and disinhumed rooms; where past

  Is not dead but comes uphot suddenly sharp as

  Drakestone. To them soldiers return; offer chickweed

  Love; others scribble the same formula home –

  All this cover with blue dome of glass

  And engrave the village Llanybri ’42:

  For OK saltates the cymric hearth and

  BBC blares from Bermondsey tongue.

  Fine gentle ways fill time’s Grave stone

  From Stonehenge Blue to Granite’s sharp Black.

  Old women die folded in skirts, their culture

  Entombed: upstarts mock at what was gracious before:

  Work out their crudeness on to change and cloth.

  Out of whalebone huts gunners drone: ‘You,

  With the gypsy slit on your ears Vaughan

  What do you make of my lover’ (!) No answer.

  ‘Who’s there in the Chapel Yard who bends?’

  Prophets warm in the shade sign black signatures

  In the Red Book of Hergest and cross their toes

  To confuse the Principality. ‘What’s that withered

  Field?’ ‘England.’ ‘Ah.’ ‘What’s that purple pool

  Of pansies lingering in so memorial

  A town?’ ‘Culture of London.’ ‘Oh, so.’

  ‘Pull down the bastard.’ ‘Pull down the flag.’

  The flag torn down. Emerald on

  Unfortunate field and red flaw its great

  Perfection; without sound crept back like myth

  Into folds of earth: grew greener shafts of resilience.

  Under the washing line of blue. ‘Who’s

  Speaking now?’ ‘Who’s there in the Chapel Yard

  Who bends?’ ‘Mari Ann is cleaning the graves.’

  ‘Where’s the “professor” he should know?’ ‘If the tide

  Swept back for Saint Cadoc where was God

  To smooth their corrugated mouths: strike a path