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Best Poems From
ERIC RATCLIFFE
(Aug 8,1918)
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13.
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Cyclic Adam
In the land of fish and heron
and white candle maidens,
a dancing queen of five wings
collecting sea coral
in a wind of no purpose,
jumping by a lighthouse
discovered the Last Man
flat on his antique belly,
grotesque with wonder,
peering a stunted face
into rocking weeds
for gods and rare lights.
Afterwards from a tree
she noted his small teeth,
watching him stretch for nuts,
naked as a puma.
Hearing a temple bell,
she vanished in green dust,
breaking holy ampules
a a protection,
incase there were also serpents.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: fish poems, tree poems, green poems, wind poems, sea poems, fishing poems, dance poems
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14.
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Desert Oil
Covet no Desert Oil O unwise Fool;
Return in wisdom to your Hut of Greed.
Else it may buckle like a storm-blown reed
- know by its darkness it is Satan's Gruel.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: greed poems
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15.
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Escape Of The Slave Girl
A low arrow, I search the land
for her silver feet moving leaves
as she follows through spiced fields,
runs, or turns to a bird cry.
My father brings an iron whip
to make her lie with Usnach
who will clasp her roughly
in a dark night without singing.
When she feathers her dawn hair
by the eyes of glittering wells,
I will give her holy corn,
my mother's summer gold
and a five-pointed sea-spear
to help her defy them
who steal near young mountains
like shadows of evening panthers.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: silver poems, father poems, summer poems, hair poems, mother poems, sea poems, dark poems, night poems, girl poems, running poems
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16.
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Magician And Manifestation
Fixed but alert, he meditated standing,
rooted in the transept of the structure
he had founded, closed in the astral dream
of a magician's moment, ghost nave behind
and all pews empty. His shaft of thought,
provided and ended with a crystal eye,
craned upward, scanning altar space, awaiting
essence of shape and archetype to form,
yang or yin, above the scarlet linen
bordered with silken cord and strewn with roses.
He had drawn his boundaries to repel all evil
in the restless shadows or the falsely beautiful.
He traced in each corner a cross within a circle,
designed four pentagrams. shielding the quarters
against flank of beast or demonic sigil;
he had called on Raphael, on Gabriel,
to Michael, to the northern Uriel,
ribboned self with an oval of pure white light
around his body's microcosm; put mentally
before the altar a manifold of hangings
of veils of white figured with his devices.
Fingered or clawed, two holding limbs
materialised, grew, with torso between
nakedly building from a zonal point,
tower high to ceiling. spiralled with energy,
coloured facets forming a giant face
in glinting amethyst, fire-laid phosphor
driven around the empty orbits.
Quickly he bowed his head to its planted feet,
its goat-horn nails. If he looked up
to this living rock, its fire-flecked eyes,
used wand to deflect, destroy its pose,
death by combustion might be what it chose.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: fire poems, evil poems, beautiful poems, dream poems, death poems, light poems, rose poems
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