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 reach
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