The Collected Poems of Edward M Robertson Read online

The Collected Poems

  of

  Edward M Robertson

  (1928 - 2011)

  The Collected Poems of Edward M Robertson

  Author – Edward M Robertson

  Copyright 2013 Edward Robertson

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  Table of Contents

  Homage to Ruberslaw

  Breath

  Badger-Watching in March Near Ruberslaw

  Spring Sketch

  All Created Things are God’s Speech

  Abernethy Tower (1)

  Contemplation

  The Dead Bat

  Abernethy Tower (2)

  To A Fellow-Creature in a Sudanese Jail

  Late Night Dog Walk

  Gorse Glories

  Autumn Contrast

  Death of our Dog Mandy

  Autumn Rosebay Willowherb

  November 4th 1989 Strathtay

  Growing Old

  Bruma Recurrit Iners

  The Tower in Mist

  January

  Ageing

  All This is Given

  Homage To Ruberslaw

  Here in the middle distance it stands,

  huge gentle beast effortlessly

  dominating the miles about,

  yet unthreatening.

  So from the Ashkirk road

  dropping down to Hawick,

  or over from Lilliard's Edge, behold

  a single hill rooted on

  the rich soil of Teviotdale.

  But see it from the Dunion road

  and down to Bedrule, and it raises

  a menacing fist, sky-thrusting rocks

  power driven by an aeons-old volcano,

  pacified only by the deep peace

  of the wooded valley.

  Again on the road to Kirkton

  rising from Bonchester, discover it

  graceful and slender, cloaked

  in flowing fields and open moorland.

  But turn then down the Denholm road

  and in a moment the secret is out

  it is a Sphinx; hidden up there among rocks

  its enigmatic smile ever unknown, unseen.

  This is my hill

  not that I own it, but rather

  that it owns me.

  Climbing its height, rambling

  around its sides, or sitting still

  badger-watching for hours

  at its feet, thrilled with

  its secret life of fox, badger and deer,

  feeling its presence in darkness

  and hearing, not with the ear

  but in my innermost memory

  its heartbeat.

  Breath

  This air that I breathe was cloak to Ben Vorlich's shoulder,

  akin to clouds, a space-glory,

  filling the wide valley and the sky;

  ran its clean fingers through the high-haired heather,

  was torn by rocks,

  fell stunned to a stop over the cliff's edge broken.

  Recovering then it rolled round the hillocked valley,

  rumpled the loch's surface,

  galloped the hillside,

  vaulted the high-barred clouds,

  then tumbled the ruffled eagle up the long-sloping sky.

  So slowly down-gliding on mile-wide wings

  it descended,

  and with a swan's beat rippled the grass to water.

  Gently it swam across the field towards me and

  all this glory it drew then together

  to a sharp, cool air and

  its whole rolling aliveness breathed into me.

  This is the air I breathe then,

  hill-heather-rock-feather-fingered,

  living in me the wide-winged aliveness

  of all things.

  Badger Watching In March

  Near Ruberslaw (1973)

  Here where the edge of the landscape blurs,

  where the eyes see more by looking away

  than by looking;

  where everything slowly, imperceptibly merges

  into everything else,

  only sounds are sharpened -

  and the wind -

  the night wind that sharpens its edge on darkness.

  The peewit teezes out its cry,

  the snipe goes sadly about its drumming courtship,

  and the curlew pours oil of soothing sound on troubled night.

  There, there suddenly -

  the one clear, visible thing -

  the v-shaped, white mask of the badger

  thrusts out, wavering and wind-testing,

  into the night air.

  And as the thrill of the night, secret

  and rare, grips you with the night chill,

  you watch the white mask disappear over

  the probable dyke.

  Look up now at the

  Sphinx-shaped Ruberslaw

  as it too disappears there,

  clambering over the edge of deep darkness.

  Spring Sketch

  Benevolent blackbirds

  blessing the setting sun

  as threads of dusk

  sew shadows into one

  thin veil of darkness silencing

  sparrows that have been chattering

  the whole day long.

  But still the eager thrush

  insists on challenging

  with thrust and parry

  his neighbour's rapier song.

  And after the failing light's thin brush

  has painted a wash of grey

  with subtle hand

  over this innocent May night

  once more birdsong begins

  slowly to swell over the land

  foam-capped waves of light

  flowing in with

  the sun's tide rising.

  ‘All Created Things Are God's Speech’

  (Meister Eckhart, 14th Century mystic and theologian)

  Voiceless words in all creation

  speak God's glory.

  Lip-read the Autumn leaves

  the Spring's unfolding story,

  the Summer dance that weaves

  patterns of silent communication;

  even Winter's bitter words

  crying 'Glory, all is glory!'

  And so with joyful faith perceive

  the many forms of God's speech.

  Yet in the language of creation

  there is dark mystery;

  lip-read the earthquake and the storm

  the terror of volcano in our history,

  flood and drought and plague that form,

  if they do speak, the word 'destruction'.

  But in the unspoken silence the Word is born

  unlike all others. And now the story

  is Gospel of God come from above

  to share as man our shattered glory

  in Crucifixion, sign-language

  not of destruction, but of Love.

  Abernethy Tower (1)

  Stones stand silent,

  centuries pass,

  old structures vanish

  into village walls,

  the tower remains;

  the circle is stronger

  than the straight line,

  curled in upon itself

  will not give up

  its history.

  Drowned in the deepening

  pool of time

  what can be seen

  lies always beyond

  our reachr />
  sinking into mystery.

  Stones stand secure,

  generations pass,

  the tower remains.

  Did they sense the struggle of muscle

  and will building up

  its height to a dignity

  no one dared violate?

  Could they hear too

  echoes of a belief

  that heaven was there

  just a little higher up

  clothing it with a sacredness

  none dare desecrate?

  Whatever it was

  kept the ancient tower

  intact, it was indeed

  heaven sent,

  not just blind fate.

  Contemplation

  ...paying attention to what we cannot control

  (Rowan Williams)

  Hands cannot handle it

  nor the eyes see

  Mind cannot grasp it

  nor the heart feel.

  Ears know it only as silence.

  Yet it has presence beyond all these

  to openness, to waiting and to stillness.

  It is not a mirror of the mind

  turning in upon itself with a sense of self-importance,

  born of a sense of doing what is important.

  It is known only as otherness and withness,

  what is beyond and yet within.

  Nothing to hold on to or manipulate;

  nothing to reach out to and control.

  But only climb the simple stair to silence,

  descend the secret steps to peace;

  there at last to find release

  from striving to be still.

  Do not call it awe ~ that is too big.

  Do not call it quietness ~ that is too small.

  But wait until it comes,

  knowing it has never been away,

  a bud within the heart

  opening with Spring's first day of flowering.

  So then attend what is within,

  growing in stillness.

  Don't mind you fail to wait without distraction.

  When you turn back, you're always made aware

  it waits unfailingly on your return.

  No more feel you've lost it when your eyes wander

  from the point invisible,

  or you lose your way in the mind's twisting maze.

  You will find you have never been

  beyond its gaze.

  It's not power brought you here

  but powerlessness.

  Don't trouble then about distraction.

  Know there remains only

  the steadfast Love

  your deepest satisfaction.

  The Dead Bat

  You were a crumpled leaf until

  I picked you up and felt

  fur on my fingers; so small

  and yet a world compressed

  into a tiny ball.

  And then I opened out your wings,

  five times your body's size,

  delicate gauze of skin on brittle bone,

  yet strong to turn and twist

  in the swirling wind about

  the roof-tops and the trees,

  where you played your fleet

  and flickering fingers

  upon the cold keys

  of the night air

  deft as a concert pianist.

  Abernethy Tower (2)

  Only yesterday these ancient stones

  were wrenched out of the earth-bound rock

  and heaved up step by step to make a Jacob's ladder

  for angels to come with blessing down their stair.

  Only yesterday these deaf stones, which heard

  the Irish monks at chanting, were built

  with brogue and mortared prayer.

  Only yesterday the Culdees raised this tower

  with arduous and faithful care.

  Only yesterday, but measured against

  the eternity of this tower's silent witness,

  it was only an hour.

  To A Fellow – Creature

  In A Sudanese Jail

  Human-kind cannot bear too much reality

  (T.S.Eliot)

  This day of sunshine,

  this day of wind,

  this day of flowing cloud

  is my day of freedom,

  of going where I will,

  of looking across the wide valley

  to the distant hill.

  This day of darkness,

  this day of airlessness

  is your day

  of ten steps' width

  and ten steps' breadth

  (ten forward, ten back)

  of staring up to a small barred

  patch of light too high to reach.

  Yet this is the same day

  for me in freedom

  as for you, my brother, in bondage.

  This time is the same time,

  though reckoned

  as different

  by clocks' relentless tread

  or suns that smile alike on good and evil;

  a time that is one in compassion,

  one for prayer and prayed-for.

  Your place in Nyala Prison is my place;

  my place by this window your home.

  Nevertheless

  we can know what the reality is

  beyond this reality.

  It is one time

  and one place

  in one land of time and space;

  if only

  we can learn

  to live in it a little

  as it truly is ~

  all times

  and all places held in one ~

  in

  Christ.

  Late-Night Dog-Walk

  Over the hard, flat rock

  of artificial street-light,

  my dog and I take our late walk.

  Suddenly, not without a shiver of

  chill anticipation, we step down into

  a pool of cool darkness – playing-fields

  at the roadside.

  I stoop down to unleash her.

  She rushes off into her element of smell;

  her nose, sharp-sighted, racing

  through a hundred quick “who-dunits” of the day.

  Disturbed lapwings rise

  complaining bitterly

  like old women wrapped in widows' weeds

  and shrill self-pitying voices.

  I feel, and almost see,

  the sheer dumb dog-joy of

  swift scent-sifting, of

  flowing muscles scattering her four

  fleet paws around the field.

  But I too am unleashed.

  The respectable role-play,

  keeping close at heel

  in the seen world,

  unclipped from my mind.

  Imagination leaps off

  plunging into another liquid darkness,

  hidden within me.

  Effortless, fish-free,

  I swim down into

  myself.

  Oh, but the tide of pain

  pulls waves of longing!

  Oh, but the fathoms flash past

  blinding in vivid streaks of black!

  I drown in myself.

  Is there no reassuring rock-bed.

  No sympathy of soft sand.

  Sorrow of flowing sea-weed for me?

  Refrigeration of blindness

  numbs me.

  Is there only

  confusion?

  Or is it that this water of darkness is light enough

  to see that drowning is survival -

  not escape but discovery,

  recovery of a lost self,

  unfelt, because feeling too deeply

  for conscious surfacing?

  Oh, can no symbols speak

  myself to me

  in the dumbness of this dark?

  “And the darkness could not

  comprehend it.”

  Is that because the
light is

  darkness?

  We scramble ashore, the dog and I,

  onto the rock of street-light -

  I, dripping drops of

  fathomless mystery

  all along the superficial pavements,

  made for a world of practical people

  who are like empty bright

  glass bottles.

  Dog-leashed and mind-at-heel,

  we reach home,

  dry but drowned,

  at our own doorstep.

  Gorse Glories

  Gorse glories the fresh green braes

  wind-whipped snowdrifts not death-white

  but life-filled golden-yellow stacked sunshine,

  bales of blazing light broken out, strewed high

  on the sun-baked brae, flung wide in

  garish glorious display.

  The hill road too that climbs the brae

  shakes out its golden gaudy cuffs

  of dazzling dandelion.

  But look aside here, where the old oak's bark

  is lichen-laden, tiny sculptures, intricate,

  innumerable, ablaze with the unburning

  flame of foxfire!

  Autmn Contrast

  The robin sews with silver thread

  golden gean and rowan red

  stitching patterns crissed and crossed

  then snips the thread with scissors frost.

  Jays like medieval jesters

  hide in the woods the sinister

  implications of their cackling laughter.

  Rooks wrestle with the wind

  grapple the gale

  retreat return

  pendulum poised

  to escape the clocks

  on wind tides' ebb and flow

  feathered flotsam

  thrown on the shingled

  shore of nowhere

  in particular but anywhere

  sucked back jetsam of gusting

  swept-up wave-cresting

  skilfully surfing everywhere.

  Death Of Our Dog Mandy

  Passing the rookery behind the school

  my mind arises to you

  to you lazy-winged wind-lovers,

  bleak leaf autumn tumblers

  endlessly inter-calling, with

  wind-walking wings, dressed for death

  yet celebrating life's full harvesting,

  tentatively inspecting your leaf-hidden

  treetop nests' fragility, yet enduring.

  Deep below in fathoms of man-stormed self-seas

  I walk death drowned,

  the surging sorrow an undercurrent so strong

  taking my sure-footed self-possession

  by surprise again.

  I realise amazed how grief, a tide,

  can pull me off balance

  to floundering flotsam

  by this small dog-death.

  Autumn Rosebay Willowherb

  High up on the railway bank