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Best Poems From
ERIC RATCLIFFE
(Aug 8,1918)
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17.
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Nurse, Teddington Hospital
They taught her to cure, not by the cradled arm,
but by sharpness of heart in face of illness;
she learned the cheerful delicate trade of orders,
moving from bed to bed on the dull parquet,
bearing the attributes of the absolute
on the shoe of her poised leg.
Yet someone had given her glen talk,
taught her to enclose a sweetness in the husk of words;
to be an artiste before stroke-seared old men
until they felt within their map of bones
the keen warmth of a summer to come,
and knew for a chalice the small glass in their hands.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: summer poems, heart poems
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18.
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Old Fragrance
Halting and walikng in strange dead seasons
through the weak light of ghost Octobers,
surrendered to the final lute
they sing from melodies unborn
They have chanted how they remembered
the first sleeping diamonds of dew
on the white flowers left weeping
by the wall in the graveyard dawn.
They have forgotten that instant without breath
in the green midnight glory of cool ferns,
that moment in the lonely bedroom
when a whole heart sighed through curled fingers
and passed between two winds in the corn.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: lonely poems, green poems, light poems, heart poems, flower poems, remember poems, sleep poems, wind poems
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19.
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On Words
Let us form our words in some October room
and let the meanings run, rounded and foretold
by the eyes' long glances, or quickenings
under white and gentle eyelids.
Let us form our words before the setting sun;
your corn hair grained with the wind;
your face trim and lovely, and the leaves
taken around us in an arch of emerald.
You, flushed as a woodman's daughter;
I, like some green giant down from the hills,
quoting the trees again.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: october poems, daughter poems, hair poems, green poems, wind poems, sun poems, tree poems, running poems
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20.
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Roman Silchester
The old carrier wind has passed the bushes,
iridescent, set rare as pagan brooches
firm in the dress of the blonde moonfield
glinting with night jewels like a crescent,
where shivered flintlight is starpointed.
Wrung from the flesh of the Atrebates
the round brown weaver trees have sprung
deep through the powdered Belgic frosts
to the magic loom of the Silchester night,
while Calleva covered the birds which sang.
And the birds which sang were like the lovers who loved
or the tall brown fruit girl of the forum
who knelt to Heracles in pre-Wessex sun
and prayed for the strength of the new men-children
she would give to time and the flowers
Here, where the gaunt tree-gnomons reach
we are not far from those old poets
who sang of the colour of beautiful women,
woven cherry-fire in their harvest faces,
blood-snow in their winter skin.
Here I will tell my last love, with her grave supple body,
when snow is melting or in winter sunlight,
'They are not the winds on the rivers or ghosts in the skies;
they live in our lonely hearts and our twin-made eyes,
though Calleva has covered her children.'
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: winter poems, snow poems, magic poems, children poems, women poems, lonely poems, strength poems, girl poems, beautiful poems, tree poems, fire poems, wind poems, night poems, sun poems, time poems, spring poems, river poems, flower poems, child poems, woman poems
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