Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems (9 page)

To you who walked so proudly down the line,

Promoting men from engine plates, skilled

Workers from the sheds: the Board soon killed

The cut you had to socialise the ‘decline’.

You, who planned man’s bonus among the whine

And shrill of people on the go; filled

The sleeper’s clock with admiration; drilled

Time in travelling into a close combine.

But now I prefer to think of you set back

Upon the land, with eucalyptus trees

Shading corral from dust: plan as you please

The round hill into a wholesome farm. ‘Their’ lack

To accept your methods receive with ease,

For they will come to that in the end or ‘freeze’.

                               In the lake of pools

Where icebergs stand firm on the ground,

And refrain to move for beauty of their image,

Five Temples lie wounded on their sides

Each plundered and more progressive than the last.

I speak of the one with the grey-crusted sleepers

Sitting in the splint-blue cave.

Especially he, of the up-side-down burial

With arrows set like buhls in the rib of the wreck:

Who was this white man of Peru?

And what flat burial did he deserve

To stir their sandstone agave? To face emerald sky

And snarling rocks where the sun’s tied up:

Lying stiff among gold filaments and animate clay

Snouting Azrael forms and intricate beads:

Those Huacas spread and exposed under cacti waterbeds,

Green as tunas, weathered with poisoned alizarin darts

Who was this man who stole their store of gold?

Who found down here down Pilcomayo way,

Near lion grass and glass birds sailing the lake,

Who was he, that lies buried at the Haravec’s feet

Aggrieved by this ice and basaltic sheet?

The pampas are for ever returning

The orange river pounding the sea,

From high dry plain with tint of tea

La Plata spreads, and churns drowning

The dust from the charcas murmuring

At the bare roots of the Ombú tree:

The pampas are for ever returning

Bright green birds into piranha sea.

Over spare-dust and barbed wire slowly

Cattle die from thirst wounds, returning

Like maté ships shivering, bringing

No sound but white bones back to me:

The pampas are for ever returning

Bad bones and dust into an angry sea.

The bell tolls from umbrella woods:

And we follow with black silk hands

Through round monastery walls to find no one there.

The bees have led us astray:

And on the turning back through death and turpentine halls

We glance tersely at the torturous Stations

Raised by the tall pillars of Rome.

Beyond glass door and circean group of sisters and swine;

Following blue serge and thin button boots;

Passing yellow chair and baskets of endless peel,

We cut our gravel paths and broke through Refectory tables.

From bread and wine interval, nuns of the red medallion

Timed our shoed-exit with glove-stick hands,

And crossed our way with the opulent ways of the Order

So that we, the pale collative faces beat a solemn retreat.

Again past cool black air and caladium altars;

Flicking water and humea into our long white thoughts

Which stretched into veils and caught our hair

On terra-cotta vases held by monandrian palms.

The chimes hastened, echoing our feet on the Aztec mosaic

As we broke light and entered the moist patio,

Its boracic colonnade squared with seraphic blue:

We were there. We were free to talk.

But still to their fury I remained the veronese mask:

The white washed statue.

The calandria in the shade.

Air white with cold. Cycloid wind prevails.

On ichnolithic plain where no print runs

And winter hardens into plate of ice;

Shoots an anthracite glitter of death

From their eyes – these men shine darkly.

With stiff betrayal, dark suns on pillow

Of snow; but not eclipsed, for out of cauterised

Craters, a conclave of Architects with

Ichnographic plans, shall bridge stronger

Ventricles of faith. They know also

Etonic vows: the abstractions which may arise:

That magnates out of pre-fabricated

Glass, may build Chromium Cenotaphs –

Work and pay for all! Contract aerodromes

To lift planes where ships once crawled, over

Baleful continents to the Caribbean Crane,

Down, to the Southern Christ of Palms

Back on red competitive lines: chaining

Chinese fields of tungsten: above pack-ice

Snaping like wolves on Siberian shores.

Over walls of boracic and tundra torn wounds,

Darkening ‘peaked’ Fuji-yama, clearing

Cambrian glaciers where xylophone reeds hide

Menhir glaciers and appointed feet.

Out of this hard. Out of this sheet of zinc.

We, by centrifugal force… rose softly…

Faded from blood sight. We, he and I ran

On to a steel escalator, the white

Electric sun drilling down on the cubed ice;

Our cyanite flesh chilled on aluminium

Rail. Growing taller, our demon diminishing

With steep incline. Climbed at gradient

42°; on to a trauma stratus

Where a multitude of birds, each wing

A sunset against a sheet of ice, dipped

And flew throughout our cloth piercing folds

Of pain and fear. Higher through moist

And luminous dust: up breathless to a jungle of

Winedamp, out of gravity and territorial

Sight on to a far outer belt muscling-in

The Earth’s curve. On speeding spirals of air

Sailed ketch and kestrel, fighting propeller,

Swastika wings and grey rubber rafts: such

Evidence reconciliating as

Time and shape floated by on swift moving layer.

Out of it.
Out of it
. To a ceiling and clarity

Of
peace
. Sweet white air varied as syllables.

Spray of air fresh, fragrant as beehive glossed

Over with beech. So quiet a terrace to tune-in-to

With prismatic shine on each cell of light:

To laze carelessly in the crown of the sky.

But timeless minds held us victims

To the sour truth.
War and responsibility
.

He, of Bethlehem treading a campaign

Of clouds, the fleecy cade purring at his side:

Sun, serene-sense, tinting page of his face roan,

Bent over glazed chart and wooden table;

With compass and astronomical calculation,

He, again at my side, pricked lines and projected

Latitudes so that we stood we cared not

How, upside-down over South American canes.

Boots proved cumbersome at the height. Bleak battledress

Irritating as old salvaged reed collar:

Black and gravel wings pinned to his heart,

A grief already told. In such radium

Activity – white starlings – suspended

On string like Calder ‘stills’ – shivered

Like morning stars in the wide open sky.

And I contented in this 4th dimensional state

Passed through, him and the table, pursued

My own work slightly
below
him. In

Sandals and sunsuit lungs naked to the light,

Sitting on chair of glass with no fixed frame

Leaned to the swift machine threading over twill:

‘Singer’s’ perfect model scrolled with gold,

Chromium wheel and black structure firm on

Mahogany plinth… nails varnished with

Chanel shocking! Ears jewelled: light hand

Tipped with dorcas silver thimble, tracing thin

Aertex edge: slim needle and strong sharp

Thread – Coats’ cotton 48 – trimmings, and metal

Buttons stitched by hand: excelling always as

Soldier shirt finished floated down to earth.

But cold out night. We wrapt our own mystery

Around us; trailed in cerulean mosquito nets,

As kale canopy lifted from cooler zones below.

Pack of stars in full cry icing the heavens

As we were compelled to descend. Disendowed;

By the State. By will of those hankering

After pig standards of gold. The fall was heavy,

Too sudden for our laughter so that we

Took it with us; dragged it slowly down through

Waled skylanes. Shocked Capricorn and Cancer who

Winked to control us like belisha beacons.

Tacked out of our course into opaline dusk.

A huge silence ashiver: Huge Witness dwells:

In Celestial Study to right and left, lucid

Eyes pay tribute, Angel secretaries with

Paper wings (and paper so scarce) dyed mauvescarlet

With chemical rings: speech blue behind aniline minds.

Away from this. Flattery and hypocrisy.

Not even a whisper escaped our lips as we

Continued in sharp descent – old minesweepers

Creaking through boisterous storms, our own God

Within us. Down into xerophilous air, clarion snow

Percolating, oölite flakes warm as

Owl tufts or deciduous leaves falling on

Flesh with the lightness of moths. Without breath

Or bell of joy lurched slipped-slid into icy

Vacuums. Fell out of frozen cylinders. Flew

Earthwards like arctic terns with spangled

Mirrors still on our wings.
Colder
. Continuous as newsreel

Quadrillion cells spotting the air, stinging

The face like a swarm of bees.
Lower. A
vitreous green

Paperweight… the sky is greenglaze with snow flying

Upwards zionwards. Such iconic sky bears promise.

Dredging slowly down, veiling shield of sky hard.

Cold. Austere
. Tumbled over each other plunged

Into a dark penumbra then through a

Rift as suddenly, the solid stone of earth

Rushed up; hit us hotly as household iron.

Over this maimed and cadaverous globe, the wind

Had streaked each ridge with piercing prongs

Of a curry comb; leaving here and there

A thin sheet of aluminium which shone out

Of the Earth’s crust. Over set currents

Of ice, emerald streams and blue electric lakes

Working simultaneously to purify the

World… down driving down… following the thin

Strokes of mapping pens, stretching a page of

Music over vast terrain. This, and stronger

Network of rails, pylons, and steel installations

The only landmark of our territory…

Down, to this bleak telegraphic planet and solid

Pyramids of canvas. Down, gunner and black

Madonna with heart of tin; surrounded

By fluttering greed of ravens, their

Beaks of bone breaking up the wounds of winter;

Croak: a mad voice sunk down a sink. The attendant

Curlews at the forage edge wearing motheaten

Shawls; shagreen legs brittle as ember twigs.

Pipe, plaintive descant sharpening the shale.

From the ascending stirrup to the sun
, down,

Dragged down we descended the slimerot ladders,

Rats withdrawing each foot: rust worn where other

Boots had rung. To the Bay known before,

The warm and stagnant wellshafts raising air

Of putrid flesh sunk in desert sands. Stepped out on to

Blue blaze of snow. Barbed wire. No man of bone.

A placard to the right which concerned us;

Mental Home for Poets
. He alone on this

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 water-ice he of deep love

Frees dragon from the glacier glade,

Sights death fading into chilblain ears.