Poem of the week: Winter Walk by Lynette Roberts

"She left the hut and bright log fire at noon And walked outside on crisp white winter snow To find the iced slopes shadowed like the moon, The wild wood desolate and bare below; The red trees wet, adrift with icy flow, The evergreens with glassy needled leaves; A bloodstone veined red and white this view weaves. But lifted off the path like crystal spheres There lay cut prints of glinting stylised forms"

"Then stamped in ice another track was seen. A slight right turn of foot. She sensed him there, Tree like with raincoat shouldered, fine large looks, A four-armed god. From this sweet honeyed snare She turned, upspraying, Marsh Tits, Finch and Rooks, Through brushwood hills, seeing by frosted brooks His footprints: these she retraced like a bride With loaves and wood returned to his keen side."

"Born in 1909 in Buenos Aires to parents of Australian-Welsh extraction, Lynette Roberts studied art in London, and subsequently spent much of her life in Wales, where, in 1939, she married the writer and editor Keidrich Rhys. Acclaimed as a modernist, Roberts sustained her dialogue with formal traditions, Welsh and English, historical and literary, yet her work is always an adventure in language."

At noon a woman leaves a hut and bright log fire to walk across crisp white snow and icy slopes. The landscape shows desolate woods, wet red trees, and glistening evergreens, while animal prints—stylised bird shapes, squirrel marks and fox paw prints—appear like crystal carvings. A slight right turn of a footprint suggests a raincoat-shouldered, tree-like figure; birds and small birds erupt, and she follows his prints back, returning with loaves and wood to his side. Born in 1909 in Buenos Aires, studied art in London, later lived in Wales and married Keidrich Rhys in 1939. Two poetry collections appeared at Faber; Carcanet later published collected and expanded editions that include Winter Walk.

Read at www.theguardian.com