Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems (13 page)

BOOK: Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems
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Part IV

The Cry of the Madonna

The same your patience unfailing,

The same your cross and your cry,

Mary, mother of Nazareth

And Mary of Llanybri

                                           
DYFNALLT

Quotation
: the above translation is from one of Dyfnallt’s poems ‘Cri Madonna’. He is one of
our poets and a leading Nonconformist minister. I should like to point out here, that
I have intentionally used Welsh
quotations
as this helps to give the conscious compact and culture of another nation. The village
of Llanybri, around which this poem is set, is Welsh speaking. Most of the people,
with the exception of the older generation
, can also speak English; either better than we can, or with a strange imagery and
intonation found in common with all peasants of the soil. I have
never
heard a Welshman say, ‘Indeed to goodness,’ etc., or any of the jargon which is broadcast
or printed as such… and will have more to say on this subject on another occasion.

Incomputable finance
: during this war the Government allowed apes at the Zoo thirty shillings per week
for their food, while soldiers’ wives received seventeen shillings and sixpence per
week to cover food, rent, clothing, and the security and protection of a child.

Barddoniaeth
: Welsh: poetry, verse.

Blue crayoned
: a line of knotted string covered with miscellaneous notes: ‘For Higgs & Porters
try 00 Downing Street.’ – ‘I won’t be more than five minutes John Evans’ – ‘Still
carrying on Riggs and Rogues Ltd.’ These, and tragic words interspersed, clipped on
with safety-pins, wire, hairpins: or emergency signs chalked up with blue crayons
on cracked and broken pavements; and behind this rain-washed line of dripping notes
– a cloud of dust –
SPACE
– and wideways stretch of sheltered rubble.

Easter Cuts
[sic]: huge mathematical heads and shoulders which grate against the fierce storms
of the tropics; and puzzle us still whether they stand outside the British Museum
or on the bleak plains of Easter Island.
A Prismatic Art
, each feature cut, alters in expression with the movement of the sun, so that he
is grinning under the evening light, may sneer before the rising of the sharp dawn.

Part V

I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

And I looked and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and
Hell followed with him.

And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth. To kill with sword,
and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that
were slain for the word of God, and for the
testimony
which they held.

And they cried with a loud voice saying, ‘How long O Lord, holy and true, dost thou
not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’

And white robes were given unto everyone of them.

REVELATION. CHAPTER V
I

Caribbean Crane
: the poet Hart Crane ‘who made a perfect dive’ off the SS
Orizaba
, and was drowned in the Caribbean on 26th April 1932.

Catena
: born Biagio,
c
. 1470–1531. A Venetian pupil from Bellini’s Bottega. His painting in the National
Gallery, ‘Saint Jerome in his Study’,
resembles
my own convent upbringing, so that I connect him with the fragrance of beeswax –
peace – serene pervading warmth of the southern air.

Reed collar
: used in this village on an occasional horse. The collar is made of woven reeds and
has no outer leather cover: the shade is olive-green: neatness and firmness of craftsmanship
something which we have carelessly lost. I have also seen one plaited in straw.

White starling
: January 1943, there was a column in the
Western Mail
by an ornithologist saying that a white starling had been seen flying over Carmarthen.
The starling has appeared in Welsh mythology more than once: and was ‘dispatch rider’
for Branwen when it flew and took her message from Ireland to Wales, so that she might
be delivered of her
unhappiness
and
hiraeth
for Wales.

Calder
: Alexander Calder.

Gorsefierce
: Leguminosae: Ulex and Genista both words of Celtic origin. The gorse is to be found
in early Triads and Welsh literature of the sixth century: a favourite flower with
King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons: and worn later as a cognisance by the Plantagenet
kings. In the language of flowers gorse symbolizes anger. A resisting spirit throughout
the severest weather, when a sheet of piercing yellow covers the hills blossoming
in this valley: November, December, January and February.

Plantagenet King
: Lordship of Commote Penrhyn, owned by Edward I, Prince of Wales, during the Hundred
Years’ War and which consisted of a pasture and grange surrounding the present villages
of Llanybri and Llanstephan: Edward, the Prince of Wales, at the same time also owned
a larger portion of the Duchy of Cornwall.

In her eyes,

The warm pool of sorrow

The wombed look of beasts

The beaten quiver.

Hair straighter than a gypsy’s

Skin cool and light

Hands crossed… of the soil.

White strength gathered in corners

Clenched those hands found bruised threadbare

Willed through cam burdens held up against her

And dispatched them to the sun.

Gentle as stardust and as little known

She strained to the Future always remote

Faded the image at too early a date

Blurred – now pale –

Lone cymry.

Published in
The Welsh Review
, 1, 6, July 1939.

I have seen the finger of God

Pale whirling with fury

Pointing the sea.

I have seen the same biblical finger

Draw water to columns

Sterner than He,

Not pagan-fluted

Or Rome’s cardinal order

But vaporous smote hollow

A supernatural reed.

I have seen light birds sailing

A ploughed field in wine

Whose ribs expose grave treasures

Inca’s gilt-edged mine,

Bats’ skins sin-eyed woven

The long-nosed god of rain

I have seen these things and known them

The moth wings to my Light.

I have seen the mountain of pumas

Harbour a blue-white horse.

The tinsel-rain on dog’s coat

Zebra shoes at night

Bruised eyes and locusts

Dull powered air

I have seen these things now free them

To Eternity in my Height.

Published in
The Welsh Review
, 2, 3, October 1939.

In steel white land far distant near snow shivers out bead sequins glare

Violent torrents thread-like glass pierce needle air bounce and curse

Screeching wind full flaying prey distorts the vision sweeps faith away

Hideous, torturous, ice to Creation, this terror fight self protect hasten

Or lonely stretched on blue-blade beds the green woad will hover weed out design

But come stern storm, hail ‘Wuthering Heights’ do what you will. I need fear no more

For my house is clothed in Scarlet.

Scarlet my household, Scarlet my mind, spiced herbed and cherished, all alcoves wine

Laughter in corners, winks on air chasing shadows on ceiling bruins in lair.

Plush lacquered incense, open flowers on wall, frothed milk bread and honey to overcome
falls

So come myth children, no longer fear, the winter is impotent under my care

For my house is clothed in Scarlet.

Published in
Wales
, 11, 1939/40.

Where poverty strikes the pavement – there is found

              No cripple like contentment

Which stultifies all statement

Of bright thought from the brain’s tent.

Published in
Modern Welsh Poetry
(Faber and Faber, 1944).

Peace, my stranger is a tree

Growing naturally though all its

Discomforts, trials and emergencies

Of growth.

It is green and resolved

It breathes with anguish

Yet it releases peace, peace of mind

Growth, movement.

It walks this greening sweetness

Throughout all the earth,

Where sky and sun tender its habits

As I would yours.

Published in
Poetry
(London), 4, 14, 1948.

At first God wanted just himself.

And this huge output of light whirled in horror

Throughout the heavens with nothing very much to do.

Knowing evil and good he was bored.

Knowing life he was really fed up,

So he set up like an artist to fulfil his daily needs,

And wandered from the first day and entered the second.

This was the layering of the mists.

And God not seeing what was under his foot

Called this the second day.

The third day God saw what was emerging beneath him.

The green mist and undulation of land and water:

Its modulated rhythm and irritability of split forms

Spitting up from the earth’s face massed fronds

And circular prisms of light.

These he watched, startled, until there evolved

The springing active branches of varied leaves,

Plants, shrubs and trees. A dishevelled array;

A residue of years impelling change of growth.

The reptiles unknown to him but already in birth

Peered at his curiosity and their own under a

Blanching light. The mammals also secure on

The tree of life and hidden by its enormous branches of

Passing mystery, clutched the young to their breasts.

On the fourth day the stars appeared in stern formation

But were obscured by the sun’s warrior rays.

The evening of the fourth day found them poxed.

They shone with anger rather than with grace

And fulfilled no heavenly place.

The moon yielded a false light and all things

Living swayed with uneasiness and took

Note of each other… interchanging and companionable…

The secret of life stirred in their blood.

And this the serpent termed fear. And he was right,

For God disappeared that night into the mist.

By the fifth day God returned to travail and

Travelled with rage over his whole continent

His potent wrath aroused birds of splendid hue and pattern

Whirls of magical and myriad moths, flocks of all

Shocked shapes and colour, all whirling, half-flying

Rumbling above the earth, rising surprised at the sight of

His terror. Then having risen once they subsided in mist.

Now let man arise.

And he came with his green shell of a body with tender

Hue out of the greening mist.

The light of God warmed and floodlit his powerless frame

And dissolved his paralytic fear and mission of no sense.

He came forward stretching for guidance.

God weakened by certain loss of his creative flame

Isolated this creature…

Who soon became truculent with too much light.

Eve arose indignant at his side. She was not created

Life compelled her forward. She held no scruples

And immediately sought the forbidden tree.

For this written evidence and graft of truth

We can be truly grateful.

Now at the end of this sixth day God having

Set his bait, fell away under his immortal palms

To quibble with his conscience. The garden was too large to

Till, and he had not given them their freedom.

The cows Eve said were the only bit of sense.

So God mused on the seventh day and lazed among the hills,

And Eve spying him out asleep against the hedge

Shouted, and knew herself to be a shrew.

This, she said, and meant it for thousands of years after,

‘Boss, this is a man’s game it is the religion of man

Just who created woman and where do we come in…

The seventh day is lousy it is our worst ever.’

Published in
Wales
, VIII, 30 November 1948.

A fox stared and outstared me – in a wood;

    In a mood of false glee

I mocked his audacity,

Now he haunts me near that tree.

Published in
Poetry
(Chicago), 81, 1952–3.

Love is an outlaw that cannot be held

Within the small confines and laws of man:

Rather it will turn, as a planet can,

Man upside down, like a first line fabled

In a notebook lightly pencilled upon

To change his sense of direction. Dimpled

Wisely like an unbridled child, love is pebbled

With smooth water and myths: a glazed swan

Shadowed in reeds: a ray of light waylaid

On swiftly moving motes. Wholesome love attends

Its own shape, warm and shining. The man who tends

The herds and street lights symbols of its trade:

It is a pacing Genesis on two legs,

Dispossessing man who unapparelled begs.

Published in
Poetry
(Chicago), 81, 1952–3.

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