Free Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems by Lynette Roberts Page A

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.

In Sickness and in Health
    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.

Blood and Scarlet Thorns
    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