Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems

by Lynette Roberts

  To the Laugharne Pubs?’ ‘Where’s John Roberts,

  Old Charon and his Coracle?’ ‘Who’s there low

  At the tide who blends?’ ‘Morgan the poacher,

  Setting horsehair with broad bean and hook,

  Sly old bugger snaring sheldrake. The State Trapper!’

  Breaming boots: bay full of spitshine and brass

  Sun splintered on waves – cupping up –

  Clear as beer sparkle… ‘you’ve had it, mun’.

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

  He, who comes from Saint Cadoc’s Chapter

  Giant or Legendary Prince, who loves

  One and no other, turns in his mind LEFT – RIGHT

  LEFT – RIGHT, tapping boot wry in the dung

  Coloured pool wonders which way and why?

  Without chevron: yet born under that gyre

  Astronomical sign: without chevron: kid

  Crests his regimental badge. Poor callid

  Cymru; unquestioning, unanswering,

  Remaining just the same, braiding wire

  With chilling hands, stands, under manurial

  Showers, till the lurid sun spills across

  The sky like a shot Indian. Then to read and relate

  By gunlight indelible: ‘We incarnate,

  Even if flesh rot you shall have Heaven,

  I immured at your side. Serene latch

  And cambric joy, floating above you shall

  Still overlook pots and pans; yet patch

  Your trousers willingly. This is no prodigal,

  There is no madrigal but my ‘word’ cleaved

  To your flesh. And you know it so need not fear.’

  Indigo, a green mist humouring Ajanta woe.

  Cool palm lighting woodbine. Out of pocket: –

  Red ink on pink lined paper: ‘Bryn Williams Carp

  For wire netting and staples 2s and 8d.’

  What setting moves mayors to play chess on rocks.

  Guns stand manned.

  Still stand.

  Mind alone,

  Knocks.

  Senile coast beetle browed down to citrine

  Rush of sea. Monster night strides up, grating

  Rock to rib of death with hide of rusty knuckle.

  A pinpoint glows, whirls, grows, whinnying

  Larger wheels over the whole damn estuary.

  Falling huge, dilating in the too close nightmare,

  Their own eyes enlarging the mayors smash rock

  Lift skirts and torques and wade out to sea. A whirrying

  Of semitic wings. High cordite flash that

  Cools the seaboard of the world. Bridling.

  Of nerves, THUD Soundless,

  Smoke fumes raise a black hearse that hovers in the sky.

  Faces forged into icing bags, challenge

  The chill fretting in waves to clear the plain,

  Leave: crimson steam; scattering of pain on

  Euripus wolds. Atonement of blood: seaflooded red.

  Fighting scarlet minutes over immeasurable

  Earth. Is reflected this day, by sodden

  Arterial men crushed under magenta

  Monstrosities, blood curdling into dog wail.

  How who then. Friend? Chine birds grip to black

  Shining cliff, and wing, fowl-of-tar, to rift

  In swivelling sea, cold hard as hand on rock:

  Sea ride neither matched nor considered in flock.

  Go down there far. Into groves of foreign

  Glitter. On water mosaic of running tides,

  Bitter with sweet birds, and unfortunate flesh; nothing

  Fitter than avidity could return such mawkish

  Litter. Go down there further and see the lucid

  Plane-of-night, strained with piteous men

  Drowned in water-swills of crossing waves; lifting

  Asteroid heads, so alike, so different from

  The petroleum sky: striking death too soon,

  And nearer and sooner than they should: this dawn

  Mauve as iron, whimpers as the biting jest.

  PART II

  Mawl i’r Haf

  Tydi’r Haf, tad y rhyfig,

  Tadwys coed brwysg caead brig,

  Teg wdwart feistr tew goedallt,

  Tŵr pawb wyd, töwr pob allt.

  Tydi a Bair, air wryd,

  Didwn ben, dadeni byd.

  I’r Alarch

  Yr alarch ar ei wiwlyn,

  Abid galch fal abad gwyn,

  Llewych edn y lluwch ydwyd,

  Lliw gŵr o nef, llawgrwn wyd…

  Gorwyn wyd uwch geirw nant

  Mewn crys o liw maen crisiant.

  Dwbled fal mil o’r lili,

  Wasgod teg, a wisgud ti.

  Siecyd o ros gwyn it sydd,

  A gown o flodau’r gwinwydd.

  Cannaid ar adar ydwyd,

  Ceiliog o nef, clog-wyn wyd.

  DAFYDD AP GWILYM (c. 1325–85)

  ARGUMENT

  By the tidal lapping of the water a gramophone remains as the only symbol of a lost airman. The challenge arises to all people to discard their sorrow, break through destruction and outshine the sun. The flowers of the field contrast sharply with the clouding dispiritedness of the soldiers, whose sickness finally develops into gastric trouble and mental neurosis. The healing hand and images of home offered by the girl to her gunner.

  We must upprise O my people. Though

  Secretly trenched in sorrel, we must

  Upshine, outshine the day’s sun. And day

  Intensified by the falling haggard

  Of rain shall curve our smile with straw.

  Bring plimsole plover to the tensile sand

  And with cuprite crest and petulant feet

  Distil our notes into febrile weeds

  Crisply starched at the water-rail of tides:

  On gault and green stone a gramophone stands,

  In zebeline stripes strike out the pilotless

  Age: from saxophone towns brass out the dead:

  Disinter futility that we entombing men

  Might curb our runaway hearts. –

  On tamarisk; on seafield pools shivering

  With watercats, ring out the square slate notes

  Shape the birdbox trees with neumes, wind sound

  Singular into cool and simple corners

  Round pale bittern grass and all unseen

  Unknown places of sheltered rubble

  Where whimbrels, redshanks, sandpipers ripple

  For the wing of living. Under tin of earth,

  From wooden boles where owls break music;

  From this killing world against humanity

  Upprise against, – outshine the day’s sun.

  Corymb of coriander: each ray frosted

  Incandescent: by square stem held, hispid,

  And purple spotted. Twice pinnate with fronds

  Of chrome. Laid higher than the exulted hedge;

  By pure collated disc of daisy glittering

  White on a red powdered stem. By cusp of leaves

  Held low to ground; this coriander cane,

  Colonnade of angelica, chevril, fennel,

  Parsley, aniseed, caraway, yarrow,

  All kitchen’s frescade culled and tied away;

  By this eyelet and low fieldfare herbs are

  Accentuated; engraved and brought to light:

  To green cymes of guelder rose and flax blue

  Meadows of Pembrey sedge. To men allergic,

  Gunners: Bogrush, Pricklesedge, stinking Goosefoot,

  Foetid Hawk’s-beard, Black Horehound, Bloody-veined

  Dock, Blue Broomrape, and Bastard Toadflax on dank

  Plain of mud cough like Kerberous in midsummer lanes.

  Food chyles constricted in their stomach,

  Twisting, knotting, and deflexed, rats bolt

  Between their teeth. All day the ghosts of ulcer

  Hover in front
of their paths. With unhealthy

  Custom the MO turns a page, lays them aside,

  Apart from communication, into pruned

  Shuttered wards, curing each for the wrong event!

  The MO turns a head. – Long necked in

  Achillean sky, geese sleeve their own

  Shadows through pools of air. Sailing downstream

  Downfast to earth. Hydroplanes splash like

  Zinnias on inrushing tides; fussy as moorhens

  With tarnished back; whose legs of peeled elm

  Trail scarlet garters into the shaking tips

  Of reeds. To their aid. To his aid. To my lover.

  Under tincture of Myddfai Hills, west of

  Bristol glass, gold with bracken dust and black

  Cattle motes and all chemical paradox:

  XEBO 7011 camouflaged in naval oilskin

  In all the gorgeous shades of Hades; –

  By seiriol cat with greenfield eyes.

  By kitchen rilled with distemper and grass.

  By coat stained and saddlestitched by my flowering

  Hands. By neighbours like Byzantine Waterspouts: leaning

  Out of bedroom windows. By damn tin-blower.

  Leaf feathers of the white-eyed woodpecker

  Spangled with lime leaves, wearing the

  Chuckling red hat! By 7. With magic and craft

  To heel. Without abbreviation or contraction

  Take thou my lover 4 pints from the ‘Farmers’ Arms’

  Or, if flat, 6 glass tankards from Jones

  ‘Black Horse’. Not supplying either sip homeward

  Sloe-gin from Merlin’s desk or board ‘Cow and Gate’

  Lorry. Up to Carmarthen: to the wine merchant’; mention

  Vicar’s name, demand whiskey ‘Old Parr’,

  Mix. Let a mixture be made. Let him my lover

  Take one silver tablespoonful out of IN

  A little water each fourth hour and the

  Acridity of his mind shall be as the crimson

  Heart on our fresco wall. – To perfect eyestrain

  For your wedgwood eyes, collyrium of well water

  From the Ffyn-on-ol-bri springs.

  PART III

  Ystyriwch eich ffyrdd. Hauasoch lawer, a chludasoch ychydig; bwytta yr ydych, ond nid hyd ddigon; yfed, ac nid hyd fod yn ddiwall; ymwisgasoch, ac nid hyd glydwr i neb; a’r hwn a ennillo gyflog, sydd yn casglu cyflog i gôd dyllog. Fel hyn y dywed ARGLWYDD y lluoedd;

  Ystyriwch eich ffyrdd.

  LLYFR HAGGAI. PENNOD I

  ARGUMENT

  The bay crystallised. Soldiers washing by the light of the moon. Swansea raid and prayer to Parliament. The gunner standing apart, through maladjustment of mind and spirit rejecting his girl. Woefully and with pained frustration. Of their love: wholesome cottage: his departure abroad. Misunderstanding and unhappiness of both.

  Embrowns himmel hokushai. Manure seeps

  In long rags, pavilions hut, camouflages

  Arsenical veins with a sprouting

  Febrifuge and serial of death; heaves a

  Heavier heart of sedimentary hate.

  Washing like flies to pin of elbow, soldiers

  Under ciliated moon shake off floatings

  Of soap; strike code on oxidised zinc; polish

  Bayonets clean as the cut of the moon to

  Sharpen inactivity. Spark electric cells

  Of air into a prism of light as they

  Shoulder the blades on parade. A shark wind teethes,

  Strips fields; striating black fullstops under hedge;

  Bellying-white trees as they stand caustic

  And chagrin. Like paleozoic sentinels, stretched high

  Above skeleton hills. Dripping rust low on

  Blue lined eddies of wind, cold down

  To the shafts of their root: to kerb of tide

  Where cracked mud quails into Kuan glaze;

  To greening dunes where rivulets shine as

  Water rises appointing silver streams

  To encircle the clay. Mounting ships higher,

  Disturbing the colder water of shells. Near

  Nightjars undisclosed, where green icy stars

  Ripple above the corn this late seaharvest.

  ‘Defending the Navy’ they say. Brothers

  Who neither coincide nor drink at the same pub.

  ‘Army batons fascist’ puff the Navy.

  ‘Aristocrats sinking fast’ is the khaki reply.

  A convoy timbers the bay. Aubergine hills

  Wounded, lie heavily in the dishwater tributary.

  Night falling catches the flares and bangs

  On gorselit rock. Yellow birds shot from

  Iridium creeks. – Let the whaleback of the sea

  Fall back into a wrist of ripples, slit,

  Snip up the moon sniggering on its back,

  For on them sail the hulls of ninety wild birds

  Defledged by this evening’s raid: jigging up

  Like a tapemachine the cold figures February

  19th, 20th, 21st. A memorial of Swansea’s tragic loss.

  Would the Warden of the Marches send us telegrams?

  Who would dismiss them with peace; throw

  Bézique on the table! A New World

  Before us O Parliament. Be merciful

  To our outcast minds shed from cuprite

  Pyrite and tin. Bare our pricket hearts

  Into a new alloy. Have mercy besides

  On us who forged away bayonet and bone.

  Standing out from the gun; bleared and solitary,

  Shading his broccoli eyelashes; sending death

  To no other than the girl he loves, gunner

  1620B64 with Post Office pen, dismal heart,

  And weak ink, signs and rescinds his love. –

  On this vitreous monochrome of a plain

  A striped rhizome cat fled across the estuary.

  He chosen, blind behind the mourning grid,

  Woe, fluttering at the bottom of a cage,

  Finds parallel nerves on watersand; dives,

  Into the torn prints of his mind, finds hurting lines.

  He nearest to the heart stands dead in his

  One and a half round the battle-waist suit;

  Boots radiating with the exuberant shine

  Of coffins among the pale and jumped up press cuttings

  Strewn around his feet. O condole. Contrive.

  With him in his constriction. He, with a blue

  Division of blades in his head: with a

  Shivershock of frustration, was a lover,

  Or had been until now, who could what the world

  Could not, without the aid of Freud, Norman Haire

  Or Stopes, offer in his own strange way

  Love sweet as a bird – savage as dog at his bone.

  Now I wretched woman watch the white shaft

  Of light greening the chimney embers,

  The ciliated pines chink with ice this

  Unwelcome frosty morning. Turn round a kitchen,

  Once fragrant and rare as borage flower;

  Sweep royal-blue walls; wash white the furniture,

  Floor, and odd crockery – draw deep red hangers.

  Who cherished love in peace and freedom, knew it

  Delicate to hold as open window at dawn.

  Where blue-eyed goose met meridian eyes shaded

  There is no shine of celandine; our souls

  Are cast into galvanised pits. I, crabbed youth,

  He cruel negation. Twisted and rough…

  Love distrained about the hearth and in running away

  To bare our child reached no further than

  The kiosk when love’s stern face dragged back my will.

  Never to be regretted or demolished.

  To love, no bed of feathers but crock of thorns.

  Yet a ritual; wanting no change. For who would

  Strive with impeccable love? To love returning
as

  Gently as the rain, with grief harnessed

  To his shoulders. To love which grew; survived all

  Credulous hate. To meet underground as gravelovers do;

  O Choice. O my beloved people remember this.

  Overseas battling in circles of lust:

  Spirit put to no better purpose than

  Grain of sand. Overwhich. Backwards and

  Forwards soldiers ran. Such battles of mule

  Stubbornness; or retreat from vast stone walls,

  Brought non-existence of past, present and

  Future 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, left, right, left, right,

  Accumulating into a monotonous pattern

  Of dereliction and gloom. When battles should be

  Fought at Home: as trencher-companions. He at my side.

  PART IV

  Cri Madonna

  Un eich amynedd yn ddi-feth,

  Un yn eich croes a’ch cri,

  Mair, mam Iesu o Nasareth

  A’ Mari o Llanybri.

  DYFNALLT

  ARGUMENT

  Of birth. Of uneventful birth. Owing to lack of money and to emotional strain death cuts in, double death, loss of lover and child. The struggle for birth under these conditions suggests a comparison with the Madonna, which becomes the nucleus and theme of the whole poem. That the birth of flesh and blood is everywhere a noble event and that lives of all nationalities must be considered sacred – not to be callously destroyed. Of the girl’s distraction. Humiliation at her double loss. Stanzas of discordant fifths prevail. Cherubs weep, and a desolation and deadness of spirit is felt as after raids. The uselessness of the soldiers’ jobs is intensified as they empty latrine buckets in the rain. Making them, since to rebel at this particular time would bring about the country’s defeat, our heroes. The heroes unknown who braved and bore, each a private crucifix.

  I, rimmeled, awake before the dressing sun:

  Alone I, pent up incinerator, serf of satellite gloom

  Cower around my cradled self; find crape-plume

  In a work-basket cast into swaddling clothes

  Forcipated from my mind after the foetal fall:

  Rising ashly, challenge blood to curb – compose –

  Martial mortal, face a red mourning alone.

  To the star of the third magnitude O my God,

  Shriek, sear my swollen breasts, send succour

  To sift and settle me. – This the labour of it…

  But reality worse than the pain intrudes,

  And no near doctor for six days. This

  Also is added truth. Razed for lack of

  Incomputable finance. For womb was

  Fresh as the day and solid as your hand.

  BLOOD OF ALL MEN. DRENCHED ANCESTORS OF WAR