Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems (13 page)
Read Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems Online
Authors: Lynette Roberts
Part IV
The same your patience unfailing,
The same your cross and your cry,
Mary, mother of Nazareth
And Mary of Llanybri
DYFNALLT
Quotation
: the above translation is from one of Dyfnallt’s poems ‘Cri Madonna’. He is one of
our poets and a leading Nonconformist minister. I should like to point out here, that
I have intentionally used Welsh
quotations
as this helps to give the conscious compact and culture of another nation. The village
of Llanybri, around which this poem is set, is Welsh speaking. Most of the people,
with the exception of the older generation
, can also speak English; either better than we can, or with a strange imagery and
intonation found in common with all peasants of the soil. I have
never
heard a Welshman say, ‘Indeed to goodness,’ etc., or any of the jargon which is broadcast
or printed as such… and will have more to say on this subject on another occasion.
Incomputable finance
: during this war the Government allowed apes at the Zoo thirty shillings per week
for their food, while soldiers’ wives received seventeen shillings and sixpence per
week to cover food, rent, clothing, and the security and protection of a child.
Barddoniaeth
: Welsh: poetry, verse.
Blue crayoned
: a line of knotted string covered with miscellaneous notes: ‘For Higgs & Porters
try 00 Downing Street.’ – ‘I won’t be more than five minutes John Evans’ – ‘Still
carrying on Riggs and Rogues Ltd.’ These, and tragic words interspersed, clipped on
with safety-pins, wire, hairpins: or emergency signs chalked up with blue crayons
on cracked and broken pavements; and behind this rain-washed line of dripping notes
– a cloud of dust –
SPACE
– and wideways stretch of sheltered rubble.
Easter Cuts
[sic]: huge mathematical heads and shoulders which grate against the fierce storms
of the tropics; and puzzle us still whether they stand outside the British Museum
or on the bleak plains of Easter Island.
A Prismatic Art
, each feature cut, alters in expression with the movement of the sun, so that he
is grinning under the evening light, may sneer before the rising of the sharp dawn.
Part V
I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
And I looked and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and
Hell followed with him.
And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth. To kill with sword,
and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that
were slain for the word of God, and for the
testimony
which they held.
And they cried with a loud voice saying, ‘How long O Lord, holy and true, dost thou
not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’
And white robes were given unto everyone of them.
REVELATION. CHAPTER V
I
Caribbean Crane
: the poet Hart Crane ‘who made a perfect dive’ off the SS
Orizaba
, and was drowned in the Caribbean on 26th April 1932.
Catena
: born Biagio,
c
. 1470–1531. A Venetian pupil from Bellini’s Bottega. His painting in the National
Gallery, ‘Saint Jerome in his Study’,
resembles
my own convent upbringing, so that I connect him with the fragrance of beeswax –
peace – serene pervading warmth of the southern air.
Reed collar
: used in this village on an occasional horse. The collar is made of woven reeds and
has no outer leather cover: the shade is olive-green: neatness and firmness of craftsmanship
something which we have carelessly lost. I have also seen one plaited in straw.
White starling
: January 1943, there was a column in the
Western Mail
by an ornithologist saying that a white starling had been seen flying over Carmarthen.
The starling has appeared in Welsh mythology more than once: and was ‘dispatch rider’
for Branwen when it flew and took her message from Ireland to Wales, so that she might
be delivered of her
unhappiness
and
hiraeth
for Wales.
Calder
: Alexander Calder.
Gorsefierce
: Leguminosae: Ulex and Genista both words of Celtic origin. The gorse is to be found
in early Triads and Welsh literature of the sixth century: a favourite flower with
King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons: and worn later as a cognisance by the Plantagenet
kings. In the language of flowers gorse symbolizes anger. A resisting spirit throughout
the severest weather, when a sheet of piercing yellow covers the hills blossoming
in this valley: November, December, January and February.
Plantagenet King
: Lordship of Commote Penrhyn, owned by Edward I, Prince of Wales, during the Hundred
Years’ War and which consisted of a pasture and grange surrounding the present villages
of Llanybri and Llanstephan: Edward, the Prince of Wales, at the same time also owned
a larger portion of the Duchy of Cornwall.
In her eyes,
The warm pool of sorrow
The wombed look of beasts
The beaten quiver.
Hair straighter than a gypsy’s
Skin cool and light
Hands crossed… of the soil.
White strength gathered in corners
Clenched those hands found bruised threadbare
Willed through cam burdens held up against her
And dispatched them to the sun.
Gentle as stardust and as little known
She strained to the Future always remote
Faded the image at too early a date
Blurred – now pale –
Lone cymry.
Published in
The Welsh Review
, 1, 6, July 1939.
I have seen the finger of God
Pale whirling with fury
Pointing the sea.
I have seen the same biblical finger
Draw water to columns
Sterner than He,
Not pagan-fluted
Or Rome’s cardinal order
But vaporous smote hollow
A supernatural reed.
I have seen light birds sailing
A ploughed field in wine
Whose ribs expose grave treasures
Inca’s gilt-edged mine,
Bats’ skins sin-eyed woven
The long-nosed god of rain
I have seen these things and known them
The moth wings to my Light.
I have seen the mountain of pumas
Harbour a blue-white horse.
The tinsel-rain on dog’s coat
Zebra shoes at night
Bruised eyes and locusts
Dull powered air
I have seen these things now free them
To Eternity in my Height.
Published in
The Welsh Review
, 2, 3, October 1939.
In steel white land far distant near snow shivers out bead sequins glare
Violent torrents thread-like glass pierce needle air bounce and curse
Screeching wind full flaying prey distorts the vision sweeps faith away
Hideous, torturous, ice to Creation, this terror fight self protect hasten
Or lonely stretched on blue-blade beds the green woad will hover weed out design
But come stern storm, hail ‘Wuthering Heights’ do what you will. I need fear no more
For my house is clothed in Scarlet.
Scarlet my household, Scarlet my mind, spiced herbed and cherished, all alcoves wine
Laughter in corners, winks on air chasing shadows on ceiling bruins in lair.
Plush lacquered incense, open flowers on wall, frothed milk bread and honey to overcome
falls
So come myth children, no longer fear, the winter is impotent under my care
For my house is clothed in Scarlet.
Published in
Wales
, 11, 1939/40.
Where poverty strikes the pavement – there is found
No cripple like contentment
Which stultifies all statement
Of bright thought from the brain’s tent.
Published in
Modern Welsh Poetry
(Faber and Faber, 1944).
Peace, my stranger is a tree
Growing naturally though all its
Discomforts, trials and emergencies
Of growth.
It is green and resolved
It breathes with anguish
Yet it releases peace, peace of mind
Growth, movement.
It walks this greening sweetness
Throughout all the earth,
Where sky and sun tender its habits
As I would yours.
Published in
Poetry
(London), 4, 14, 1948.
At first God wanted just himself.
And this huge output of light whirled in horror
Throughout the heavens with nothing very much to do.
Knowing evil and good he was bored.
Knowing life he was really fed up,
So he set up like an artist to fulfil his daily needs,
And wandered from the first day and entered the second.
This was the layering of the mists.
And God not seeing what was under his foot
Called this the second day.
The third day God saw what was emerging beneath him.
The green mist and undulation of land and water:
Its modulated rhythm and irritability of split forms
Spitting up from the earth’s face massed fronds
And circular prisms of light.
These he watched, startled, until there evolved
The springing active branches of varied leaves,
Plants, shrubs and trees. A dishevelled array;
A residue of years impelling change of growth.
The reptiles unknown to him but already in birth
Peered at his curiosity and their own under a
Blanching light. The mammals also secure on
The tree of life and hidden by its enormous branches of
Passing mystery, clutched the young to their breasts.
On the fourth day the stars appeared in stern formation
But were obscured by the sun’s warrior rays.
The evening of the fourth day found them poxed.
They shone with anger rather than with grace
And fulfilled no heavenly place.
The moon yielded a false light and all things
Living swayed with uneasiness and took
Note of each other… interchanging and companionable…
The secret of life stirred in their blood.
And this the serpent termed fear. And he was right,
For God disappeared that night into the mist.
By the fifth day God returned to travail and
Travelled with rage over his whole continent
His potent wrath aroused birds of splendid hue and pattern
Whirls of magical and myriad moths, flocks of all
Shocked shapes and colour, all whirling, half-flying
Rumbling above the earth, rising surprised at the sight of
His terror. Then having risen once they subsided in mist.
Now let man arise.
And he came with his green shell of a body with tender
Hue out of the greening mist.
The light of God warmed and floodlit his powerless frame
And dissolved his paralytic fear and mission of no sense.
He came forward stretching for guidance.
God weakened by certain loss of his creative flame
Isolated this creature…
Who soon became truculent with too much light.
Eve arose indignant at his side. She was not created
Life compelled her forward. She held no scruples
And immediately sought the forbidden tree.
For this written evidence and graft of truth
We can be truly grateful.
Now at the end of this sixth day God having
Set his bait, fell away under his immortal palms
To quibble with his conscience. The garden was too large to
Till, and he had not given them their freedom.
The cows Eve said were the only bit of sense.
So God mused on the seventh day and lazed among the hills,
And Eve spying him out asleep against the hedge
Shouted, and knew herself to be a shrew.
This, she said, and meant it for thousands of years after,
‘Boss, this is a man’s game it is the religion of man
Just who created woman and where do we come in…
The seventh day is lousy it is our worst ever.’
Published in
Wales
, VIII, 30 November 1948.
A fox stared and outstared me – in a wood;
In a mood of false glee
I mocked his audacity,
Now he haunts me near that tree.
Published in
Poetry
(Chicago), 81, 1952–3.
Love is an outlaw that cannot be held
Within the small confines and laws of man:
Rather it will turn, as a planet can,
Man upside down, like a first line fabled
In a notebook lightly pencilled upon
To change his sense of direction. Dimpled
Wisely like an unbridled child, love is pebbled
With smooth water and myths: a glazed swan
Shadowed in reeds: a ray of light waylaid
On swiftly moving motes. Wholesome love attends
Its own shape, warm and shining. The man who tends
The herds and street lights symbols of its trade:
It is a pacing Genesis on two legs,
Dispossessing man who unapparelled begs.
Published in
Poetry
(Chicago), 81, 1952–3.