Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems (8 page)

When rose-hips red as braziers shine from the hedge

And spring with natural grace over quick snapping sill,

I suggest to you, is fear the backbone of a pledge,

The spine-cord of tradition, frail people on edge:

Those, who sit upstairs and make old promises with skill,

When rose-hips red as braziers shine from the hedge

And are taut and jumpy to catch from the ledge

So that to fill a promise means leaping the water-mill,

I suggest to you, is fear the backbone of a pledge;

That they do not hasten the experiment, but hedge

And let a brandy hen with its vermilion gill,

When rose-hips red as braziers shine from the hedge

Outshine them both, do what they would not with courage

Cross the wet mill and find the rare Dusky Crane’s Bill.

I suggest to you, is fear the backbone of a pledge

That people mild as ducks seem put out by the sedge,

By things so natural, preferring drudge and privilege.

When rose-hips red as braziers shine from the hedge

I suggest to you, is fear the backbone of a pledge?

Heard the steam rising from the chill blue bricks,

Heard the books sob and the buildings huge groan

As the hard crackle of flames leapt on firemen

                        and paled the red walls.

Bled their hands in anguish to check the fury

Knowing fire had raged for week and a day:

Clung to buildings like swallows flat and exhausted

                        under the storm.

Fled the sky: fragments of the Law, kettles and glass:

Lamb’s ghost screamed: Pegasus melted and fell

Meteor of shining light on to a stone court

                        and only wing grave.

Round Church built in a Round Age, cold with grief,

Coloured Saints of glass lie buried at your feet:

Crusaders uncross limbs by the green light of flares,

                        burn into Tang shapes.

Over firedrake floors the ‘Smith’ organ pealed

Roared into flames when you proud widow

Ran undaunted: the lead roof dripping red tears

                        curving to crash.

Treasure was saved. Your loyalty broke all sight,

Revived the creed of the Templars of old;

Long lost. Others of the Inn escaped duty

                        in black hats.

Furniture out, slates ripped off, yet persistently

Hoovering the remaining carpet, living as we all do

Blanketed each night, with torch, keys, emergency basket

                        close by your side.

From paper window we gaze at the catacomb of books,

You, unflinching, stern of spirit, ready to

Gather charred sticks to fight no gas where gas was

                        everywhere escaping.

Through thin library walls where ‘Valley’ still grows,

From Pump Court to dry bank of rubble, titanic monsters

Roll up from the Thames, to drown the ‘storm’ should it

                        dare come again.

Still water silences death: fills night with curious light,

Brings green peace and birds to top of Plane tree

Fills Magnolia with grail thoughts: while you of King’s Bench

                        Walk, cherish those you most love.

Spring which has its appeal in ghosts,

Youth, resurrection, cleansing of the soil,

And in dormant roots already considered,

Stirs, with the sharpening of branches

Challenges heart to do that which it cannot,

Sustain overwork, overthought, overlove.

It clears a path for hope: reinstates

Faith, which we had too easily omitted

With death, in the caustic months of the year.

Summer proclaims joy, laughter before its

Arrival: and deceives us into malice

With its non appearance. It suggests

A romance that we have not received

Sunny balconies in the mind: the seldom

Forgotten perfect island summer with its

Warm haze on flesh, flower, and hide:

The blossoming of their structure, fragrance

And appeal, from their own root recorded. 

Autumn comes strutting in like a cockerel,

Red, blue, yellow and brown. It disintegrates

Our purpose of singular thought; destroys

Relationships: and cuts the sap of pride

Ruthlessly. Those who survive retain one heart

And voice. Yet autumn with contrawise motion

Shields the creative mind with covering of leaves,

Settles and matures dormant growth which will

Reappear, under the hard skies of spring.

Winter exceeds the year with impunity:

Devours us of all greed: and freezes

That residue. It upholds that which is not:

Which is, the blaze of summer biting

Into our nature for a future reappeal.

Winter intones loss of all things:

Is the next step to death which is loneliness:

Comfort and warmth to be found around our own

Heart and grate, within the steel ribs of this age.

                     He whom my heart sings to

                     Is gone alone home;

                     And I am left,

                     Onela,

                     Alone in a wood of tears

                     In the woodlight

                     Alone.

                     Birds fly to no purpose

                     Birds cannot sing

                     When I am about,

                     For they dread the tale

                     Of old,

                     13 hundred years ago;

                     When man of God could

                     And would be saved by God,

                     Alone.

                     Over alluvial plains

                     Through brushwood keeps

                     And harrowed land,

                     There lay on pale sweet ground

                     A head of fire

                     Open to the wind,

                     Flaming to the skies

                     Hallowing the sun

                     From under the wind.

                     To desperate wings

                     And melting tide,

                     Soundmind lost;

                     Soundmind never

                     Accounted for.

                     Caedmon on the shell tip

                     Saw, back to Streanaeshalch

                     With his third eye set on the Abbess Hild,

                     Waiting for his death,

                     His telling of the tale,

                     The old tale,

                     Retold.

Not for all Heaven was he the loveliest

Lying in cold expectation;

Denying Kings his image in the last round.

His huge woolly head full of sparks and spires.

Not for all Heaven was he the gentlest

Easy to acquire grace and
hebankuningas
,

Mounting pulpits, hands and mind to a wooded measure.

Not for all Heaven was he the bravest

Facing the last storm – alone on the shore,

Fevered with anxiety of another life

Tearing wild angels flitting among his brain,

Falling into precipice of mind and monastery.

Not for all Heaven was this to take place,

But for the good of man: for the simple things he loved:

The heart on green: beasts rising from the earth: for his herds:

For his dream to be retold for his sandcoloured nights

Clothed with the visions of the preceding monks

Chanting over hills; white with their powdered breath

Of pure song and intermediate praise.

Three grouped: stern walls: sky and hills moist:

These familiar sights alone held his brain,

Forced them to bitter images of life and death:

To the tale I tell of deeper times

When man of God could and would

Be saved by God alone. To the moment of darkness

Which fell with the moment of Greater Light:

To the Commanding Vision and Sensitive Mind of God:

To waterpeace and mist: this being the end of all.

This being the God-Head to which he returned,

With his flaming head and proud sorrel chest.

Convent of cold stream.

Convent of white ice stiff on each heart

Break boundary of death.

O strictly forget the accustomed torture.

Turn to fireflames ringing bells for sorrowing souls

Stretched damp out of green bone.

To warmth of blood affinity, dissolved in earth elemental,

Crisp crust of red.

To mauve muslin: flight of hovering flames:

Break fire diaphanous,

Use discipline to feed-guide its flame;

The hearth is yours,

She within it with you over the pain.

Turn solace addressed by care;

The icicle cannot pierce deeper than it has,

And it will dissolve invisibly

As miracles do into thin blue air:

Brush no eyes in passing,

But your own – to leave red rims free from torture.

Death shall not be
.

The surrender to another:

The step straight – spare:

Concert of cold stream nursed by another’s wing

Who thaws and quenches pain whether hot or cold;

Stepping on clean stones through flood and mudsilt of war,

Sleeping on clear pillow – an angel heads the bed.

Who bends the plain to waist of night

And stems the bird to tree of flight,

Who stretches leagues to see a bone

Of bison cast as proud as stone,

Who lengthens maize and sweeps the light

Of grenadine right out of sight;

It is the hard and monstrous plight

Of weeping birth this citron dawn,

                            This citron dawn,

A heart breaks through the ice of night

Who is, and bursts a paper kite

That sails the day into a dome

Of joy, and tears, and monotone,

This day maintained: a child was born,

                             A child was born.

Rain freezes our senses.

Our gills fill with a drill motion:

Chills the air and stills the billing birds

To shrill not trill as they should

In this daffodil spring.

We till away, killing pests,

Filling the rills with commercial pills.

We will the sownseed to live in spite of

The swill spouting from the sky.

Rain instils our mind with imperilled dampness;

Rain fells our own skilled discipline

In long stiff strides,

Milling up seedsown with our spilling fists.

Rain falls, drips even from frilled shelves

And envelopes; splashing ink on mourning edges,

Overbrimming pools of wet water;

Rain comes streaming down where there is too much

Falling, drips drops, in wet circles on pond;

Duck dives and bank rats, even they hate

The pelting stinging rain

That beats into their heart

Rings of woe on zinc covered roofs,

On rusty baths and pale iron spikes.

I would see again São Paulo:

The coffee coloured house with its tarmac roof

And spray of tangerine berries.

I would again climb the mountain cable

And see Pernambuco with its dark polished table,

The brilliance of its sky piercing through the trees

Like so much Byzantine glass or clear Grecian frieze.

As we stumble higher strolling gourds and air-plants

Spring from muscoid branch to barnacle wire:

I would see old man should it come my way,

The mahogany pyramids of burnished berries, gay

With surf-like attitudes of men sitting around

In crisp white suits, starch to the ground.

The peacock struts and nets mimicrying butterflies,

And the fazenda shop clinking like ice in an enamel jug

As you open the door. The stench of wine-wood,

Saw-dust, maize flour, pimentos, and basket of birds,

With the ear-tipped ‘Molto bien signorit’ and the hot mood

Blazing from the drooping noon. Outside sweating gourds

Dripping rind and peel; yet inside cool as lemon,

Orange, avocado pear.

While in this damp and stony stare of a village

Such images are unknown:

So would I think upon these things

In the event that someday I shall return to my native surf

And feel again the urgency of sun and soil.

Memory widens our senses, folds them open:

Ancient seas slip back like iguanas and reveal

Plains of space, free, sky-free, lifting a green tree

                               on to a great plain.

Heard legend whistling through the waiting jabirú,

Knew the two-fold saying spinning before their eyes

Breaking life like superstition, they too

                               might become half-crazed.

Staring sitting under the shade of Ombú tree,

Living from the dust: kettles simmer on sticks,

Maté strengthens their day’s work like dew

                               on hot dry grass.

So the people baking too close fulfilled time,

Bricks became mud walls and the legend flared high,

Shadows broke, flames frowned and bent the sky

                               proclaiming Indian omens.

Roofs fell clattering in on man and child,

Black framed their faces, from fire not from sun:

While before them land divided announcing

                               stake peggers’ loud claim.

Death ate their hearts like locusts over a croaking plain,

Fell tears red as fireflies on the rising dust;

Barbed wire fenced them in or fenced them out,

                               these outcasts of the land.

So the people fled unwanted further on into the land,

On to the Plain of White Ashes where thorns spread

Like the wreath of Christ. Further out on to

                               the ancient Sea of Rhea.

Ombú turned hollow as it stood alone:

Spiders lifted the lids of their homes and slammed them back

Sorrow set the plovers screaming at the falling

                               hoofs and feet:

Cinchas bound their eaten hearts: leather sealed their lips;

Ponchos warmed their pumpkin pride: as insects floated,

As windmills grew. Ventevéo! Ventevéo! And further they

                               strove, the harder not to be seen.

Lost now. No sound or care can revive their ways:

La Plata gambles on their courage, spends too flippantly,

Mocks beauty from the shading tree, mounts a corrugated roof

                               over their cultured hut.