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Authors: Lynette Roberts
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and petulant feet
Distil our notes into febrile reeds
Crisply starched at the water-rail of tides.
On gault and greensand a gramophone stands:
In zebrine stripes strike out the pilotless
Age: from saxophone towns brass out the dead:
Disinter futility, that we entombing men
Might bridle our runaway hearts.
On tamarisk, on seafield pools shivering
With water-cats, ring out the square slate notes.
Shape the birdbox trees with neumes. Wind sound
Singular into cool and simple corners,
Round pale bittern grass, and all unseen
Unknown places of sheltered rubble
Where whimbrels, redshanks, sandpipers ripple
For the wing of living. Under tin of earth
And wooden boles where owls break music:
From this killing world against humanity,
Uprise against, outshine the day’s sun.
Woodpecker
In elm no bird of jade
Shall creep with cold grey toes
For where I am when the spray
Of green sunlocks the bay
Married to song, mocks the day
In town no bird.
In town no bird alloy
Shall graze my heart’s shy grace,
For here at the lathe when the ring
Of steel threads the spring
For a chromium plane, I sing
In town no bird.
In town no bird, O greenscarlet
Fate on a white-eyed quest,
A black stave quavers the brain
Drills and derides the reign
Of shells with laughter’s bane,
In town no bird.
In town no bird, too late
To shrive with hot house tears,
For now with jazz in sky alone
Among the purr of metal wings
A coloured band resounds my grief
In town no bird.
Curlew
A curlew hovers and haunts the room.
On bare boards creak its filleted feet:
For freedom intones four notes of doom,
Crept, slept, wept, kept
, under aerial gloom:
With Europe restless in hís wing beat,
A curlew hovers and haunts the room:
Fouls wire, pierces the upholstery bloom,
Strikes window pane with shagreen bleat,
Flicking scarlet tongue to a frenzied fume
Splints hís curved beak on square glass tomb:
Runs to and fro seeking mudsilt retreat;
Captured, explodes a chill sky croon
Wail-íng… pal-íng
… a desolate phantom
At the bath rim
purring burbling trilling soft sweet
Syllables of sinuous sound to a liquid moon
Till window, wide, frees thin mails of plume,
Fluting voice and shade through cloud���s moist sleet:
A curlew hovers and haunts the room.
Moorhen
That this, so common an event
In so deplorable a State
Should draw a wreath of joy
From our pale reeded hearts:
That she, without interference
Or compound political tags,
Can, so easily, paddle out
Her freshest brood of sleek black hens:
Stealing the water’s shine with elm-
Webbed stretch, the ribbons of sun
Winding around their necks:
Timely jerks purling through
Grisailles of rain – shocking the air
With scarlet bill and garter.
A bank rat sharpening his teeth
Might up on his haunches to listen:
A wise owl with rabbit ears
Could hardly frown at all this fuss.
Seagulls
Seagulls’ easy glide
Drifting fearlessly as voyagers’ tears:
Quay and ship move as imperceptively,
Without knowing we weep.
Cry gulls who recall
An ocean of uncertainty;
Greed of rowing men
Mere flies at the ship’s sides.
Last bargains roped and reached:
And as imperceptively regretted,
Tears of fury and stupidity
Reel down the runnels of those cheeks.
Fifth of the Strata
And the sea will insist
Persuade a path to follow,
Longs eagerly to cover
The green valley pastures:
To flow forward along
The sunken ribbed coomb
And dry river-bed… endlessly.
And it will succeed
Tomorrow follow
All gravel roads
And rise slowly around
The Dragon’s scaled Fort;
To leave nothing of Wales
But white island shining
The crest of Snowdon
Glittering with dark wintry-ice.
Find no woe in this:
For this is tomorrow.
And before tomorrow
England will be
For thousands of years
Lying below us
A submerged village
Like weeping Halkin;
When other and better banks
Dry from ocean beds,
Built of
Distil our notes into febrile reeds
Crisply starched at the water-rail of tides.
On gault and greensand a gramophone stands:
In zebrine stripes strike out the pilotless
Age: from saxophone towns brass out the dead:
Disinter futility, that we entombing men
Might bridle our runaway hearts.
On tamarisk, on seafield pools shivering
With water-cats, ring out the square slate notes.
Shape the birdbox trees with neumes. Wind sound
Singular into cool and simple corners,
Round pale bittern grass, and all unseen
Unknown places of sheltered rubble
Where whimbrels, redshanks, sandpipers ripple
For the wing of living. Under tin of earth
And wooden boles where owls break music:
From this killing world against humanity,
Uprise against, outshine the day’s sun.
Woodpecker
In elm no bird of jade
Shall creep with cold grey toes
For where I am when the spray
Of green sunlocks the bay
Married to song, mocks the day
In town no bird.
In town no bird alloy
Shall graze my heart’s shy grace,
For here at the lathe when the ring
Of steel threads the spring
For a chromium plane, I sing
In town no bird.
In town no bird, O greenscarlet
Fate on a white-eyed quest,
A black stave quavers the brain
Drills and derides the reign
Of shells with laughter’s bane,
In town no bird.
In town no bird, too late
To shrive with hot house tears,
For now with jazz in sky alone
Among the purr of metal wings
A coloured band resounds my grief
In town no bird.
Curlew
A curlew hovers and haunts the room.
On bare boards creak its filleted feet:
For freedom intones four notes of doom,
Crept, slept, wept, kept
, under aerial gloom:
With Europe restless in hís wing beat,
A curlew hovers and haunts the room:
Fouls wire, pierces the upholstery bloom,
Strikes window pane with shagreen bleat,
Flicking scarlet tongue to a frenzied fume
Splints hís curved beak on square glass tomb:
Runs to and fro seeking mudsilt retreat;
Captured, explodes a chill sky croon
Wail-íng… pal-íng
… a desolate phantom
At the bath rim
purring burbling trilling soft sweet
Syllables of sinuous sound to a liquid moon
Till window, wide, frees thin mails of plume,
Fluting voice and shade through cloud���s moist sleet:
A curlew hovers and haunts the room.
Moorhen
That this, so common an event
In so deplorable a State
Should draw a wreath of joy
From our pale reeded hearts:
That she, without interference
Or compound political tags,
Can, so easily, paddle out
Her freshest brood of sleek black hens:
Stealing the water’s shine with elm-
Webbed stretch, the ribbons of sun
Winding around their necks:
Timely jerks purling through
Grisailles of rain – shocking the air
With scarlet bill and garter.
A bank rat sharpening his teeth
Might up on his haunches to listen:
A wise owl with rabbit ears
Could hardly frown at all this fuss.
Seagulls
Seagulls’ easy glide
Drifting fearlessly as voyagers’ tears:
Quay and ship move as imperceptively,
Without knowing we weep.
Cry gulls who recall
An ocean of uncertainty;
Greed of rowing men
Mere flies at the ship’s sides.
Last bargains roped and reached:
And as imperceptively regretted,
Tears of fury and stupidity
Reel down the runnels of those cheeks.
Fifth of the Strata
And the sea will insist
Persuade a path to follow,
Longs eagerly to cover
The green valley pastures:
To flow forward along
The sunken ribbed coomb
And dry river-bed… endlessly.
And it will succeed
Tomorrow follow
All gravel roads
And rise slowly around
The Dragon’s scaled Fort;
To leave nothing of Wales
But white island shining
The crest of Snowdon
Glittering with dark wintry-ice.
Find no woe in this:
For this is tomorrow.
And before tomorrow
England will be
For thousands of years
Lying below us
A submerged village
Like weeping Halkin;
When other and better banks
Dry from ocean beds,
Built of
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