Read Online Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems by Lynette Roberts - Free Book Online
Authors: Lynette Roberts
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shadowed
A storm of sorrow drowned the way.
Broken Voices
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.
Earthbound
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.
Spring
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.
Rhode Island Red
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.
Ecliptic Blue
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.
Poem
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
A storm of sorrow drowned the way.
Broken Voices
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.
Earthbound
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.
Spring
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.
Rhode Island Red
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.
Ecliptic Blue
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.
Poem
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
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