Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems (10 page)

BOOK: Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems
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The Circle of C

Dogs of Annwn
: The ghosts of dogs, heard and seen in the sky. Invariably connected with Hell and
Death omens. They appear in early triads, and in the first story of the Mabinogion,
(Pwyll Prince of Dyved). The legend is no doubt associated with Sirius and the third
sea-track of the Phoenicians which may have guided those people to our shore: with
Kerberos: and later to emerge as ‘Cŵn Ebrill’, when curlews crying at night are said
to hunt for the souls of the dead. I have used this image as an interpretation of
the raiders droning over estuary and hill; their stiff and ghostly flight barking
terror into the hearts of the villagers.

Broken Voices

An attempt to apply the strict form of the Welsh englyn to the English language. As
far as I know Robert Graves, at the age of thirteen, is the only other poet to have
attempted this. Here is an example of englynion by R. Williams Parry, from ‘In Memoriam:
Morwr’:

Y Tom gwylaidd, twymgalon, – sy’n aros

Yn hir yn yr eigion:

Mor oer yw’r marw yr awron

Dan li’r dŵr, dan heli’r don.

O ryfedd dorf ddiderfysg – y meirwon

A gwymon yn gymysg.

Parlyrau’r perl, erwau’r pysg,

Yw bedd disgleirdeb addysg.

Fifth of the Strata

Halkin
: a village which was submerged near St Ismael, Towy Estuary, about 1606.

Crossed and Uncrossed

For the form in this poem and that of ‘The New World’ I should like to make acknowledgements
to Professor George Thomson: and in particular for the analysis in his ‘Book on Greek
Metres’ of the third and extended line of the sapphic stanzas.

Orarium

Streanaeshalch
: Whitby, where Caedmon’s monastery once stood.

Hebankuningas
: old Saxon ‘the heavenly kings’ quoted from an MS found
in the Vatican Library, and now believed to be the original passage of Caedmon’s ‘Genesis’
from which the English poem in the book of ‘Anglo- Saxon Poetry’ was taken. In this
poem I have tried to revive an echo of the rhythm and syntax:… ‘not is the Kingdom
of Heaven like to such flames; this was of all lands the loveliest, that we two here
through our Lord’s grace have might… where thou to that one not heard, who for us
two this calamity has decreed. In that we two the ruler’s word have violated…’

Royal Mail

Mimicrying
: from the n. mimicry. Here used as a verb, to convey the meaning of both sorrow and
mimicking. The butterfly, brazilian blue, is caught by waving a transparent net of
peacock blue attached to a long slender pole. This deceives it into the belief that
there are other butterflies flitting about on the outer edge of the wood so that it
is easily attracted and caught. The commercial use made of their wings; and the fact
that ‘certain members of the Lepidoptera possess a capacity for sound production’
(A.D. Imms, MA, DSc) permitted me to take this liberty.

The New World

Jabirú
: stork.

Ombú
: botanically a plant: but, to all outside appearances a tree. The fruit resembles
white mistletoe berries, the trunk is hollow, and the branches spread and hang like
old and young English Oaks. It is the only covering of shade which grows and spreads
naturally on the Pampas. There are two legends connected with it. That which W.H.
Hudson has dealt with: and the second explained to me at the Convent of the Sacred
Heart… where he or she who sits under its shade will eventually become crazy.

Ventevéo
: an evil and much feared bird whose call, like the human voice, draws men deeper
and deeper into the jungle from where they seldom return. The bird, perching high
on the tree at night, penetrates the conscience of the people… come I see you… come
I see you. It is said to be under the command of the devil; and its light frame of
bones a
receptacle
for the departed souls of sinners, who unable to find peace, return to flit about
restlessly on the earth.

Xaquixaguana

Lake of pools
: and lion grass: are literal translations of the Patagonian lakes, Nahuel Huapi and
Traful.

Sun tied up
: Inca idiom from the Quinchua language.

Huaca
: consecrated objects preserved with the dead; transferred to the Spanish language
and now connected with any superstition attached to a small possession or particular
object.

Haravec
: Quinchua Language, the tribal poet, chronicler.

River Plate

Piranha
: fish which attack cattle and human beings in large shoals and eat them alive. When
cattle have to swim across the river, the drovers (peones) usually send over the poorer
beasts first, so that if a shoal of piranha are present, they will attack and be absorbed
by these, while the healthier herds swim across in safety.

Cwmcelyn

Pronounced Coom-kel-in, meaning ‘The Valley of Holly’. Quotation in Welsh from Revelation
ch: VI, v. 7–11.

GODS WITH STAINLESS EARS

A Heroic Poem

1951

 
This Poem is dedicated to Dr Edith Sitwell

A glyweisti a gant Avaon

Vab Taliesin, gerdd gyfion,

Ni chel grudd gystudd calon.

Brân a gant chwedl ar uwchder

Derwen uwch deuffrwd aber,

Trech deall na grymusder.

Gwna y goreu ym mhob angen,

O’r peth fo’n dy berchen,

Gwell no dim gwasgawd brwynen.

C
ATTWG DDOETH A’I CAN
T

This poem was written over a period of two years, 1941–3. Not liking varied metre
forms in a long poem, short-lipped lyrics interspersed with heavy marching strides,
and not feeling too comfortable within the strict limits of the heroic couplet (wanting
elbow room and breathing space), I decided to use the same structure throughout, changing
only the rhythm, texture, and tone
internally
. The use of congested words, images, and certain hard metallic lines are introduced
with deliberate emphasis to represent a period of muddled and intense thought which
arose out of the first years of conflict, e.g. Factory hands and repetitive lines
re-occur with the same movement as with a machine. For this I adapted the villanelle
(see page [47]). Towards the third year of war, clear, cold, and austere sight is
regained, and I have tried to control the stanzas in the fifth part of this poem under
these conditions. The subject is universal, and the tragedy one of too many. Here
I would add that my own, though part may be expressed, is outside the page.

The background is similar to any rural village: only the surface culture is superimposed
or altogether distinct. The sentences at the end of the book are to pierce any obscurity
which may arise owing to the isolation of localised folklore; or to make known the
legends which belong to this
particular
part of the world.

Finally, when I wrote this poem, the scenes and visions ran before me like a newsreel.
The galley sheets on which I wrote the first draft may be partly responsible for this
occurrence. But the poem was written for filming, especially Part V, where the soldier
and his girl walk in fourth dimension among the clouds and visit the various outer
strata of our planet.

L
YNETTE
R
OBERTS

The Caravan

Laugharne

15
th November
1949

A synnasant oll, ac a ammheuasant, gan ddywedyd y naill wrth y llall, Beth a all hyn
fod?

Ac eraill, gan watwar, a ddywedasant, Llawn o win melus ydynt.

YR ACTAU. PENNOD I
I

ARGUMENT

The poem opens with a bay wild with birds and somewhat secluded from man. And it is
in front, or within sight of this bay that the whole action takes place: merging from
its natural state into a supernatural tension within the first six stanzas. War changes
its contour. Machine-gun is suggested by the tapping of a woodpecker which gives out
the identity of the gunner and provides his nationality, ‘a dragon of wings’. Soldiers
and armoured corps arrive: military parade and propaganda: factory workers and fatigues.
The rural village described within view of this estuary where soldiers wander during
the short hours of their leave. The gunners in action, and of one in particular. He,
belonging to a Welsh regiment reading a bill by gunlight, and a letter from his girl
in which she tells him they are to expect a child. Night falls, and with it comes
the wrecking of a plane.

Today the same tide leans back, blue rinsing bay,

With new beaks scissoring the air, a care-away

Cadence of sight and sound, poets and men

Rediscovering them. Saline mud

Siltering, wet with marshpinks, fresh as lime stud

Whitening fields, gulls and stones attending them;

Curlews disputing coverts pipe back: stem

Plaintive legs deep in the ironing edge, that

Outshines the shale, a railway line washed flat,

Or tin splintered from a crab-green cave.

This is Saint Cadoc’s Day. All this Saint Cadoc’s

Estuary: and that bell tolling, Abbey paddock.

Sunk. – Sad as ancient monument of stone.

Trees vail, exhale cyprine shade, widowing

Homeric hills, green pinnacles of bone.

Escaping from these, tomb and cave, quagmires

Migrate; draw victim eyes with lustre sheen, suck

Confervoid residue from gillette veins: who talk

Now yield, calling others, those who walk

From Llanstephan, Llangain, and Llanybri.

No watereyes squinting or too near madness

Could fail such a trek. In this same old soddenness

In deep corridor graves culverts open; their

Gates kedged in mud, preening feathered air

Elucidating shapes flecked with woolglints

And small affiliated tares. – So walk swiftly by,

For today,
pridian
, tears ravens wings to grate

The bay, and John Roberts covered with ligustrum,

Always sanitary and discreet, rows to and fro from

Bell house to fennel, floating quietly on the tide.

In fear of fate, flying into land Orcadian birds pair

And peal away like praying hands; bare

Aluminium beak to clinic air; frame

Soldier lonely whistling in full corridor train,

Ishmaelites wailing through the windowpane,

O the cut of it, woe sharp on the day

Scaled in blood, the ten-toed woodpecker,

A dragon of wings 1 6 2 0 B 6

4 punctuates machine-gun from the quarry pits:

Soldiers, tanks, lorry make siege on the bay.

Freedom to boot. C
ONCLAMATION
. C
OMPUNCTION
.

Kom-pungk’-shun: discomforts of the mind deride

Their mood. Birds on the stirrups of the waterbride

Flush up, and out of time a tintinnabulation

Of voice and feather fall in and out of the ocean sky.

A sanctuary taken – trenched underfoot.

For today, today, the simple bay pined for

Out of reach. The atmospheric bogfoot

Out of season: culverts close their gate,

Machine sets against clay; irons a new uniform.

Trees crisp with Maeterlinck blue, screen

Submarine suns and baskets of bees: but

Men nettled with pie-powdered feet, angry

As rooks on their pernickety beds ‘training

For another Cattraeth’ said Evans shop.

D
ISSIMILAR
. D
ISSUNDERED
. C
RANCH-CRAKE
CRANCH-CRAKE

A
SHIVER
. A
NHUNGERED ANHELATION
.

C
ERAUNIC CLOUDS CRACK IN THEIR BRAIN
.

Who was to be ring carrier for Jerrymandering

Gerontocracy. The officer yellow with argyria?

Soldiers seldom suffered from this; for silver

Scarcely smoothed their palm. C
ONGRIEVED
. C
ONSTRAINED
.

C
ONDEMNED
.
Subversive
(?) for humanity blast this

And much else besides. Hell would chill a chitter

Chatter at the sight of their conflowing misery.

S
HUN
.
Father Precipice of Denbigh Rock,

Mother Mild of Pembroke Streams, Have mercy on.

Cantation us to shoal deep winter
.

Men fall to arms. Men stemmed to die

For the century. Then leap fast to the bone

Take wailing bayonets from the ice of wound.

Emblaze your handrails. Men fall to arms.

Men purred to fight – each other. So can we foresee

Death. Set each life against time. Jagged bitterns:

Gradgrinds all. – Now we ruined in life, bound

For detention in field, again build on lime

And rubble. To what age can this be compared?

Men slave, spit and spade. Glean life pure.

Accelerate oxidised roads. Drill new hearts and hearths.

Impale the money-goaders’ palisade. And you

Of acetated minds, workers with xantheine

Faces, revolutionise your land; holding

The simple measures of life in your hand,

Remembering navies and peacocks never sail

Together in the aftermaths of disaster.

Into euclidian cubes grid air is planed.

Propellers scudding up grit and kerosene, braid

Hulls waled 5 miles hollow, spidering each man stark

On steelweb, hammering in rivets ambuscade

Interrupted by sirens screaming tirade.

With machine-strength wearing blinkers and mask,

Will of iron moulding surface to brain chained:

While below in well shafts soldiers squat and cark,

Shell and peel pods and spuds: girders craned;

Into euclidian cubes tempered air is planed.

The brown paper parcels of sappers who ask,

Shelling and peeling: ‘
How’s Jane to-day?
’ Barricade

Against blast and red-hot ingots; clatch

Of ricocheting wheels – hell’s dim decade

Interrupted by sirens, screaming tirade.

Where each day ingrained is a chained task,

A clatter of clogs, winding of nerves: Fatigues

Thinning into vocal farms, war-limed grey,

Stately as battleships heeled to cove: there forced

Into euclidian cubes carol air is planed.

When daily the water trudge with battering can,

Striding out of snail from sprockets of kale;

Where tractors, carts like nasturiums crack

The windowpane; to rattle of boiling buckets,

Sleeve of plane rippling over hedge:

To each striped tidy plot aproned women work,

Spadeing clay and coal dust into ‘pele’ jet. To them

To iron bedsteads; kitchens farms cut open

With grates. To calico; village scintillating

Like mothball white on a hill: cresting cascades

And red rock, throwing out a shower of birds,

Woodcutters, and harrowing of gulls. Where

Women titans are weathervanes who fetch

In the cows who wander the valley prints

Greening the squares of their eyes. To men

Ploughing strig and stubble: near geese full of

White ‘airs’ crisping out their quills, whose

Eyes and ears surrounded with orange cord

Detect and hear the running pads of spiders;

Or better round the slow-slipping dairy-roof

Where rabbits hang punched on the door. To chink

Of ceramic jugs glazed with the lead of years,

Brass and blue glister under paraffin pools

By which everything rubied glows, baize and lace

Curtained to night; intrinsic to seal light

Crouched black on summer sills. Until the watersky

Of dawn flickers a sail-wash shimmering aquamarine

Into TB and disinhumed rooms; where past

Is not dead but comes uphot suddenly sharp as

Drakestone. To them soldiers return; offer chickweed

Love; others scribble the same formula home –

All this cover with blue dome of glass

And engrave the village Llanybri ’42:

For OK saltates the cymric hearth and

BBC blares from Bermondsey tongue.

Fine gentle ways fill time’s Grave stone

From Stonehenge Blue to Granite’s sharp Black.

Old women die folded in skirts, their culture

Entombed: upstarts mock at what was gracious before:

Work out their crudeness on to change and cloth.

Out of whalebone huts gunners drone: ‘You,

With the gypsy slit on your ears Vaughan

What do you make of my lover’ (!) No answer.

‘Who’s there in the Chapel Yard who bends?’

Prophets warm in the shade sign black signatures

In the Red Book of Hergest and cross their toes

To confuse the Principality. ‘What’s that withered

Field?’ ‘England.’ ‘Ah.’ ‘What’s that purple pool

Of pansies lingering in so memorial

A town?’ ‘Culture of London.’ ‘Oh, so.’

‘Pull down the bastard.’ ‘Pull down the flag.’

The flag torn down. Emerald on

Unfortunate field and red flaw its great

Perfection; without sound crept back like myth

Into folds of earth: grew greener shafts of resilience.

Under the washing line of blue. ‘Who’s

Speaking now?’ ‘Who’s there in the Chapel Yard

Who bends?’ ‘Mari Ann is cleaning the graves.’

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

Swept back for Saint Cadoc where was God

To smooth their corrugated mouths: strike a path

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

L
EFT – 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

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