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Enkele gedichten van Jane Roberts

The children play hopscotch
On cracked moonlit sidewalks.
Spotlighted they leap
From square to square.
The parents sit watching
From porch chairs rocking.
Inside, white beds in a starry row
Wait crisply clean and bare.

The children play hopscotch
On cracked moonlit sidewalks.
On the sidelines the parents watch
As long as they dare.
"When will they discover?"
Murmurs one mother.
The child leaps like a firecracker
Into the air

And back again, touched
As by tissues' fire,
Crying and burning
The child crumbles there,
And rises exeultant
In the cracked moonlight,
Baptized and holy
And wickedly bright.

"Mommie," he calls,
But the porches are bare.
Insubstantial shadows
Inhabit the rocking chair.
"You've won the game
As we knew you would."
Scornful and sad
Come the voices of blood.

"Take over, take over,
It's your turn now."
Through the sober street
Their ghostly voices blow.
The children stop and listen,
They shriek, "It isn't fair,"
But the game is forever,
The rocking chairs creek and glide.
The children in grown-up images
Sit on cool porches in July.

It is pringtime, grandfather

Uit de herdruk: "EPOS", lente 1961, Vol. 12, No. 3

It is Springtime, grandfather,
Rockets circle the awakening earth.
The plants on my window sill grow tall, grandfather,
And whisper greenly toward the sun.

The earth has taken what you were, grandfather
Wind, water, dust, an airy frame
Hung together with molecules most loosely,
Chemicals that grew to consciousness and song.

But light is life, grandfather.
It whispers the carbon beauty of your bones.
It will explode the hydrogen and water of you,
grandfather,
Your brain will speed through earth like a
rocket toward the sun.

It is Springtime, grandfather,
I burst and grow and am reborn in every cell.
My living, dying, watery atoms splash and speak
your name, grandfather,
And we are both plants on a window sill.

My grandfathers world

Uit de herdruk "EPOS", SPRING 1963, Vol. 14, No. 3

My grandfather's world was one small town,
The streets stretched out from ear to ear.
No one else walked where he walked,
Inside his life no trees were dumb.

Grandmother stood as best she could,
She battered at his town's door,
But she had no passport, and the wind
Crinkled the edges of her soul.

It drove her raving mad, I think.
She wandered all days after him.
Her voice banged its fist
And the heart of her knuckles bled.

Grandfather's streets stretched out for years,
And no one else walked on them,
His footprints grew like wild oak trees
And my grandmother stealthily cut them down.

But she never found when he had gone,
His skull clear as day.
Yet he returns when lilacs blow,
And walks inside my head.

Lullaby

Uit de herdruk "EPOS", Lente 1963, Vol. 14, No. 3

No matter, no matter, my darling,
I'll drown you in the deep park pond.
It will be a special occasion
So you may put on your best party dress.

Wipe your tears and we'll sing, darling,
While rockets explode in the strange evening sky.
See the people rush screaming to doorways and porches
As if a parade were passing by.

The dark winter world turns kindling bright.
The cold snow is heat-gobbled and gone.
July flashes bright in the December night,
And the streets burn summer-warm.

Oh the firecrackers are blossoms, darling
And the night is a sudden flame dawn.
Hide your head in my lap and we'll sing, darling,
London bridge is falling down.

Hurry now, London bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London bridge is falling down,
My fair lady - o.....

Beware, October

Uit de herdruk "EPOS", herfst 1964, Vol. 16, No. 1

Rockets sweep through ancient skies.
The orange moon rises.
Golden apple satellites
Hang from starry branches,
October, coils its haunches.

How far can October reach ?
Can its giant padded paw
Knock the golden apples down,
Shake the shooting rockets loose
That spin about its shaggy head
And steal for fuel its very breath ?

Will October turn in rage
And howl out its bitter truth ?
I am earth and what is made
is mine, born from star or beast.
Deny me and apples fall like leaves
Or ash and turn to autumn smoke.

This wrist, this hand

Uit de herdruk "EPOS", zomer 1965, Vol. 16, No. 4

More than a million microbes form this wrist, this hand.
Star born, time blown from galaxies long dead,
These molecules, glistening then in earthly slime
Have grown to love and burst to mind.

Atoms walk upright in a spindly frame,
And speak, and call themselves by name.
Bright with a new and terrible hunger,
They burn the cosmos with red wonder.

This formula of wind and water, of stardust and sunfire
Has learned to sing, and singing, dies.
Yet even death untopseyturveys to set right again.
Each starburst hand has been a stone or flower,

A microbe shining in warm shallow seas,
A raindrop, and will be more again.
I sing of this while we are one,
Yet still will sing when I am done.

The flowers

Uit de herdruk "STEPPENWOLF", No. 1, Winter 1965-1966

We never found the flowers.
When you sent us from the house
It was dusk,
And the streetlights were all on.
We stopped once to rest.
The moon rushed
Past treetops and we followed,
But we never found the flowers,
And when we returned
The house was dark.
Even the kitchen light was off.
Your cloths sat stuffed
With flesh and bones.
But it made no difference,
You were gone.

Vision

Uit de herdruk "DUST/9" Vol. 3, No. 1, herfst 1966

I saw myself stretched out among the stars.
My skin, an open mesh
Was hung with seeds and moons and fish.
Birds flew through my flesh
Which rose in continental mass
From seas on space. One arm,
A universe, was flung
Akimbo. My third left finger nail
Was earth, pearl tipped and turning
With the measured motion of my wrist.

One eye looked out and saw the form-
The thighs spread galaxies- and saw
The burst of each cell-star that plunged
Into instant shape within the flesh.
The other eye, turned inward, glimpsed
New webworks and cocoons
Spun from thoughts and dreams that spread
Images outward with each breath.

Who whispers Yes

Uit de herdruk "DUST/12" Vol. 3, No. 4 lente 1969

I said
No no no to death.
Who whispers yes?
What traitor
Is so close
Who steals my voice
To whisper yes
While I cry no?

He makes pacts
Behind my back
With death. Who knows
What promises he makes
That I must keep?
His acquiesence
Takes my breath,

And yet
He speaks from depths
As sly as sleep.
What part of me is this
Who whispers yes
To death, while I
Cry no?

The Familiar

Uit de herdruk "BITTERROOT" Vol. 1 No. 2 Winter 1962

Say we climbed into our white beds
Watching all the furniture with fascination
Born of children's dread, as if the chairs
Could turn goblin,
Or the curtains blowing with the wind
Could curl into flame.

I shall die in the springtime

Uit de herdruk "PATTERNS" Vol. 1 No. 1 Oct. 1954

I shall die in the Spring
Time, grandfather.
Earth, feeding her desires
Will welcome still warm flesh.

There will be cool winds
That will be my thoughts, grandfather,
They will rush through my skull
Like shadows or grey birds.
Wait and listen for me, grandfather,
As once we walked through forest, lend your hand.
The wind of eternity blows through my hair,
And I feel it touch my palm with ice.

I shall be part of earth and spring again, grandfather,
I shall be wind again. I shall be tree and flower.
I shall be free of the wheel again, grandfather,
Why does this cause me pain?

Lyric

Uit de herdruk "PATTERNS" Vol. 1 No. 1 Oct. 1954

Have I loved enough
Each tree and star
To take them with me
Very far?

Will bony fingers
And hollow brain
Remember the touch
Of the cool spring rain?

Will socket of eyes
Remember dawn,
Will limbs feel the earth
They lie upon?

Image of tree,
Of star and sun,
Burn bright as wound
When wish is done.

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