Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems (20 page)

Pendine Sands, a few miles from Laugharne and Llansteffan.

This poem is not part of the manuscript of
The Fifth Pillar
, and seems to have been written later. It is typed up on a sheet of paper with various
fragments
of other, also unfinished, poems, and was probably written after the
Fifth Pillar
poems.

In 1948–9, Roberts moved to a caravan in Laugharne, adjacent to the
graveyard
. She divorced Rhys the following year.

El Dorado

This verse-play was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 1 and 5 February 1953
and repeated twice. The story is taken from an article, among Roberts’s papers, from
the
Buenos Aires Herald
, 28 July 1936. The article was sent to her by T. Hughes Cadvan, the son-in-law of
J.D. Evans, the sole survivor of the massacre of the Welsh colonists, and one of the
original
colonists who landed on the Patagonian shores in 1865. Cadvan Hughes had read Roberts’s
piece ‘Patagonia’ in
Wales
, and in his letter he tells her that the article is written by him from Evans’s own
account:

Hughes ends the letter by adding a couple of
eglynion
from a friend of his in Chubut ‘to show that there are Welshmen with poetic leanings
living in Patagonia’.

There are also among Roberts’s papers two letters from a Geoffrey Parry
Rhys of Weston-Super-Mare, great-grandson of the Parry who was killed in the Kel Kein
confrontation (‘I have always been told he was scalped!’), asking for a copy of ‘El
Dorado’.

The broad outlines of the story are as follows: in late 1883, four young Welsh men
went prospecting for gold, following the Chubut river, on a journey to the interior
of the territory that would take three and a half months. When, at the end of February
1884, they reached the confluence of the Chubut and the Lepá rivers, they found no
gold, but met two Indians, who invited them back to their camp in Súnica. The Welsh
were
suspicious
, and decided to hurry back to the colony, a journey of over 300 miles. It was a dangerous
and difficult journey, and two of the men, Parry and Hughes, became so exhausted that
they had to be strapped to their saddles. By 4 March they had crossed the Chubut and
reached the Kel Kein valley. Evans rode off to hunt for food, and when he returned
the men were attacked by the Indians. Only Evans escaped, by riding his horse into
a steep gulley, gaining precious time over the Indians, who were forced to make a
detour to avoid the dangerous descent. According to the article, he looked behind
him and saw ‘his comrade Davies falling from his horse speared through, Parry with
a spear stuck in his side but still keeping his seat’. Evans eventually reached the
Iamacan river, and rejoined the Chubut. When he reached Gaiman, he was taken in by
another Welsh settler, and noticed for the first time a gash in his armpit where he
too had been speared. When told of the incident, the founder of the Welsh colony,
Lewis Jones, refused to believe that the Indians had done this, as relations between
the Welsh and the Indians had always been good, and Jones considered himself ‘a personal
friend of the Indian chiefs’. Jones himself led an expedition to verify Evans’s account
of the incident, and took Evans with him. According to the article, ‘The bodies of
the unfortunate young men lay where they had fallen mutilated in the most cruel and
savage manner, too revolting for description’. The bodies were buried there in a single
grave, and a short service held. A marble monument, paid for by subscription, was
later placed at the spot. Evans later farmed and started the first flour mill in the
area, and became known as ‘El Molinaro’. In the photograph accompanying the article,
Evans sits beside the monument to his horse, ‘El Malacara’.

1. A curlew hovers and haunts the room.
   15
   
2. A fox stared and outstared me – in a wood;
   86
   
3. A pencil left in her sweet room,
   88
   
4. A whirl of cobalt birds against
   89
   
5. Air white with cold. Cycloid wind prevails. (‘Cwmcelyn’)
   32
   
6. Air white with cold. Cycloid wind prevails. (
   Gods with Stainless Ears
   , Part V)
   64
   
7. And as the log burnt up and bright
   93
   
8. And the sea will insist
   17
   
9. At first God wanted just himself.
   84
   
10. Because you produced the birth of sound within me
    100
    
11. Concrete slabs measured overnight into
    94
    
12. Convent of cold stream.
    24
    
13. Embrowns himmel hokushai. Manure seeps
    56
    
14. Every waiting moment is a fold of sorrow
    5
    
15. Eyelashes like barley hairs,
    94
    
16. Fields of camomile and clover
    93
    
17. For seven days the dawn,
    91
    
18. Green gregarious green
    95
    
19. He alone could get me out of this
    99
    
20. He whom my heart sings to
    22
    
21. Heard the steam rising from the chill blue bricks,
    20
    
22. Here a perfect people set – on red rock,
    9
    
23. I have seen the finger of God
    81
    
24. I own,
    102
    
25. I spent my days in passage ways,
    103
    
26. I walk and cinder bats riddle my cloak
    7
    
27. I would see again São Paulo:
    27
    
28. I, in my dressing gown,
    10
    
29. I, rimmeled, awake before the dressing sun:
    60
    
30. I’ll not wash now Mam
    91
    
31. If I could create one tree
    92
    
32. If you come my way that is
    …
    3
    
33. If you have your heart in a thing
    96
    
34. In elm no bird of jade
    14
    
35. In her eyes,
    81
    
36. In steel white land far distant near snow shivers out bead sequins glare
    82
    
37. In the cold when sea-mews flake the sky
    12
    
38. In the lake of pools
    30
    
39. Love is an outlaw that cannot be held
    86
    
40. Memory widens our senses, folds them open:
    28
    
41. Out of the hot womb into the cold night breeze,
    95
    
42. Peace, my stranger is a tree
    83
    
43. Rain freezes our senses.
    26
    
44. Seagulls’ easy glide
    16
    
45. Sitting in the emerald of twilight
    90
    
46. Sitting surrounded by wasps,
    103
    
47. So that magnetism pierces each blight
    18
    
48. Spade jackets and tapping jackdaws on boles of wood,
    12
    
49. Spring which has its appeal in ghosts,
    21
    
50. Stern pattern cut.
    95
    
51. Stone village, who would know that I lived alone:
    6
    
52. That this, so common an event
    16
    
53. The ‘pele’ fetched in. Water
    89
    
54. The bell tolls from umbrella woods:
    31
    
55. The full field.
    11
    
56. The pampas are for ever returning
    30
    
57. There was a carpenter at my door,
    98
    
58. Through the trees… sea,
    90
    
59. To pine, moan, grieve, to hone,
    99
    
60. To speak of everyday things with ease
    4
    
61. To the village of lace and stone
    8
    
62. To these green woods where I found my love:
    87
    
63. To you who walked so proudly down the line,
    29
    
64. Today the same tide leans back, blue rinsing bay,
    44
    
65. Very strange is this fish and gift,
    97
    
66. We must upprise O my people. Though (‘Poem’)
    13
    
67. We must uprise O my people. Though (
    Gods with Stainless Ears
    , Part II)
    53
    
68. When fold of iron blue and
    96
    
69. When rose-hips red as braziers shine from the hedge
    19
    
70. Where leaves grow out of tree trunks
    102
    
71. Where poverty strikes the pavement – there is found
    83
    
72. Who bends the plain to waist of night
    25
    
73. With eyes like tired skies and shifting explosion
    97
    
74. You want to know about my village.
    4
    

First published in Great Britain in 2005
by Carcanet Press Ltd, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ

This ebook edition first published in 2012

All rights reserved

Works by Lynette Roberts copyright © Angharad and Prydein Rhys 2005
Preface copyright © Angharad Rhys 2005
Selection, introduction and editorial matter copyright © Patrick McGuinness 2005  

The right of Patrick McGuinness to be identified as the editor of this work has been
asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
 

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred,
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Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of
the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
 

Epub ISBN 978–1–84777–564–1
Mobi ISBN 978–1–84777–565–8

The publisher acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England