Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems (7 page)

To the village of lace and stone

Came strangers. I was one of these

Always observant and slightly obscure.

I roamed the hills of bird and bone

Rescuing bees from under the storm:

Five hills rocked and four homes fell

The day I remember the raid so well.

Eyes shone like cups chipped and stiff

The living bled the dead lay in their grief

Cows, sheep, horses, all had got struck

Black as bird wounds, red as wild duck.

Dead
as icebone breaking the hedge.

Dead
as soil failing of good heart.

Dead
as trees quivering with shock

At the hot death from the plane.

        O the cold loss of cattle

        With their lovely big eyes.

        The emptiness of sheds,

        The rick stacked high.

        The breast of the hills

        Will soon turn grey

        As the dogs that grieve

        And I that fetched them in:

        For the good gates are closed

        In the yard down our way.

‘But my loss. My loss is deeper

Than Rosie’s of Chapel House Farm

For I met death before birth:

Fought for life and in reply lost

My own with a cold despair.

I hugged the fire around the hearth

To warm the beat and wing

Yet knew the symbol when it came

Lawrence had found the same.

I threw the starling hard as stone

Into the breaking earth
…’

Dead
as icebone breaking the hedge

Dead
as soil failing of good heart.

Dead
as trees quivering with shock

At the hot death from the plane.

        O the salt loss of life

        Her lovely green ways.

        The emptiness of crib

        And big stare of night.

        The breast of the hills

        Yield a bucket of milk:

        But the crane no longer cries

        With the round birds at dawn

        For the home has been shadowed

        A storm of sorrow drowned the way.

Here a perfect people set – on red rock,

         White and grey as gull met

     Pure to plough, each prince hamlet

     Of slate strong as rate ticket.

Now one mouth twisting twelve tongues – of the flock

         Unlocked the padlocked lungs:

     Slung a trail of steaming dung

     Blocking path of two not sung.

Stained virgin village with dearth – for the mock

         Like strumpet jet, rocked mirth

     And farmer: brought no more worth

     Than winding sheet of sour berth.

When gossip kneads to grave crust, – with feared shock

         Runs into fox of dust,

     Then shall the two minds discussed

     Remain bold with new sung trust.

I, in my dressing gown,

At the dressing table with mirror in hand

Suggest my lips with accustomed air, see

The reflected van like lipstick enter the village

When Laura came, and asked me if I knew.

We had known him a little, yet long enough:

Drinking in all rooms, mild and bitter,

Laughing and careless under the washing-line tree.

The day so icy when we gathered the moss,

The frame made from our own wire and cane;

Ivy in perfect scale, roped with fruit from the same root:

And from the Pen of Flowers those which had survived the frost.

We made the wreath standing on the white floor;

Bent each to our purpose wire to rose-wire;

Pinning each leaf smooth,

Polishing the outer edge with the warmth of our hands.

The circle finished and note thought out,

We carried the ring through the attentive eyes of the street:

Then slowly drove by Butcher’s Van to the ‘Union Hall’.

We walked the greaving room alone,

Saw him lying in his upholstered box,

Violet ribbon carefully crossed,

And about his sides bunches of wild thyme.

No one stirred as we offered the gift. No one drank there again.

The full field.

The stiff line of trees.

The antiseptic grass – dew shining.

The green,

Spraying from shorn hedgerows.

Sodium earth dug hard;

Bound by the fury of the earth’s lower crust.

Black bending cattle nose to the warmth.

Pebble sheep pant to a lighter tune.

To high air sustained.

To high springing air.

To blue-life-mist rising from the flaming earth.

On aconite shade and xerophyte fern

Dull sheep lie:

That heat ‘Lamb’s Ear’.

That heat farmer’s head.

That heat rick and roar,

Into a raging flame.

From innermost earth.

From fire underground.

From fire out of sight.

From rising fire in the sky

To Spring.

All glory,

And faith in mankind.

Spade jackets and tapping jackdaws on boles of wood,

               Song of joy I sing.

Prim-pied under sky full of fresh livelihood,

              Smile for eye of man.

Outhouses sweet with air stand whitened by the flood,

               Of sun blanching spring.

In plate green meadows sheepdog and farmer brood,

               On galvanised can.

Calling cattle from celandine and clover to mood,

               Song of joy I sing.

In the cold when sea-mews flake the sky

With their curmurring fight for the eye

Of food on water blue, I think of snow.

                              I think alone.

I think of the sea its tall high waves

Of the eyes that it seeks, of the lives

That say the waves seek dead, it is not so

They are not dead.

For sea gives more than it takes and spreads

No stain of death on life of man, but treads

The dead for further flight, as sea-mews know,

                             As sea-mews go.

We must uprise O my people. Though

Secretly trenched in sorrel, we must

Upshine outshine the day’s sun: and day

Intensified by the falling prism

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 reeds

Crisply starched at the water-rail of tides.

On gault and greensand a gramophone stands:

In zebrine stripes strike out the pilotless

Age: from saxophone towns brass out the dead:

Disinter futility, that we entombing men

Might bridle our runaway hearts.

On tamarisk, on seafield pools shivering

With water-cats, 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

And wooden boles where owls break music:

From this killing world against humanity,

Uprise against, outshine the day’s sun.

In elm no bird of jade

Shall creep with cold grey toes

For where I am when the spray

Of green sunlocks the bay

Married to song, mocks the day

        In town no bird.

In town no bird alloy

Shall graze my heart’s shy grace,

For here at the lathe when the ring

Of steel threads the spring

For a chromium plane, I sing

        In town no bird.

In town no bird, O greenscarlet

Fate on a white-eyed quest,

A black stave quavers the brain

Drills and derides the reign

Of shells with laughter’s bane,

          In town no bird.

In town no bird, too late

To shrive with hot house tears,

For now with jazz in sky alone

Among the purr of metal wings

A coloured band resounds my grief

         In town no bird.

A curlew hovers and haunts the room.

On bare boards creak its filleted feet:

For freedom intones four notes of doom,

Crept, slept, wept, kept
, under aerial gloom:

With Europe restless in hís wing beat,

A curlew hovers and haunts the room:

Fouls wire, pierces the upholstery bloom,

Strikes window pane with shagreen bleat,

Flicking scarlet tongue to a frenzied fume

Splints hís curved beak on square glass tomb:

Runs to and fro seeking mudsilt retreat;

Captured, explodes a chill sky croon

Wail-íng… pal-íng
… a desolate phantom

At the bath rim
purring burbling trilling soft sweet

Syllables of sinuous sound to a liquid moon

Till window, wide, frees thin mails of plume,

Fluting voice and shade through cloud���s moist sleet:

A curlew hovers and haunts the room.

That this, so common an event

In so deplorable a State

Should draw a wreath of joy

From our pale reeded hearts:

That she, without interference

Or compound political tags,

Can, so easily, paddle out

Her freshest brood of sleek black hens:

Stealing the water’s shine with elm-

Webbed stretch, the ribbons of sun

Winding around their necks:

Timely jerks purling through

Grisailles of rain – shocking the air

With scarlet bill and garter.

A bank rat sharpening his teeth

Might up on his haunches to listen:

A wise owl with rabbit ears

Could hardly frown at all this fuss.

Seagulls’ easy glide

Drifting fearlessly as voyagers’ tears:

Quay and ship move as imperceptively,

Without knowing we weep.

Cry gulls who recall

An ocean of uncertainty;

Greed of rowing men

Mere flies at the ship’s sides.

Last bargains roped and reached:

And as imperceptively regretted,

Tears of fury and stupidity

Reel down the runnels of those cheeks.

And the sea will insist

Persuade a path to follow,

Longs eagerly to cover

The green valley pastures:

To flow forward along

The sunken ribbed coomb

And dry river-bed… endlessly.

And it will succeed

Tomorrow follow

All gravel roads

And rise slowly around

The Dragon’s scaled Fort;

To leave nothing of Wales

But white island shining

The crest of Snowdon

Glittering with dark wintry-ice.

Find no woe in this:

For this is tomorrow.

And before tomorrow

England will be

For thousands of years

Lying below us

A submerged village

Like weeping Halkin;

When other and better banks

Dry from ocean beds,

Built of crystalline rock

And sharp shell and shale

Will arise for our freedom

For
our
feet to follow:

And this shall be always,

As it is never
.

So that magnetism pierces each blight

And shallow ring: sends a scaffold of light

Through suspended hills, drinks truculent sight

And water-silk of day, floating splashing

Eyelashes on about air, swilling

Swallows clean against Sunday, clearing

Breasts whiter than butterflies low over sill;

Who glazed this day? Fetched labourers to spill

About soil, spading like hairpins to till

Of earth. Who gently lifts a strawberry set,

Opens row to shine streamlets of violet sweat,

Sun concentrating on circlet of dust a banquet

Of warmth: tends garden twine unravelled on path,

Liquid gleam round each raceme of grass, an aftermath

That quavers like parakeet fresh out of its bath.

Who polished this day? String of mackerel and glue

Sized and scoured sky to its finest grain of blue:

Flashed motor spirit through each splint of wing: drew

And transfixed man at his most monstrous art of war:

Picked out world mildew and muddled indifference; saw

Heart, pressure of steel, culled into a shadowed claw

Sharpen infinity, and all trees of branched iron,

Leaves elliptical pinnate sprayed thinly over rinsed apron

Of space, their metallic hue so starkly crisp, enamel legion

Of the partial eclipse: darkening nature

Finding a ferret of lines in each feature:

Who clipped this white-eyed splendour? Barbed-wire-fixture.

Meat cover on slab of slate prosecuting inkstand

Cold basin and porcelain plate. Day’s bristol shine: a band

Of empty beer bottles, wine jars green for thirst. So reprimand

And commemorate, for this day will come again, war and day,

Imprisoning each other with shylock glint: betray

Clashing bayonets, hold up of sunny sideboard and pay.

Who ran with the sun sandpapered the way? You

Under arcade of bracelet blue: or was it the view

That clarified thursday, September nineteen forty-two.