Free Lynette Roberts: Collected Poems by Lynette Roberts Page B

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.

Rainshiver
    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.

Royal Mail
    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.

The New World
    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