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Best Poems From
ERIC RATCLIFFE
(Aug 8,1918)
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29.
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Death Was No Empty Hat
Death was no empty hat, but a swung trapeze
swept through a hall of song.
Hung on a silver wire, the winging bar
leaped in a singing breeze.
Riding with woe, the sweet violins of home
grieved in the high wall-lilac
and the cadences of a shadowless piper called
piteously from old pavements.
I heard, with the sighs of centuries, pagan notes
whispering in the cupola,
and saw in the flare of thunderhooks, scarecrow skies
with wondering savage moons,
and a horn with flag-ribbons blown by a coloured bird
flying before my eyes.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: silver poems, song poems, home poems, death poems, sky poems
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30.
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Eucia The Briton Greets The Dawn
Was the cave sweet at the end, Eucia?
Come, naked-on-moss, little one,
white and marine, to the cirque of your father.
Rise from your cloak leaves and come, Eucia,
pilgrim-in-feet, tender and pinniform,
royal as ermine-with-light.
Caesar and Arthur, Guthrum and Ota
will follow Hu of the plains
and here some will build in great grey stone.
But this is the day you shall bathe by the rush-spikes
- those Vikings-on-marsh, with black fowl watching,
by neckton and plankton and idle green.
Beware of the Pit Man, sheltering low
by ox blood and wood ash and the teeth of foxes,
a skin on his evil rocks;
where the bark has gone from the long tree
and the blue wind wings through a heap of bones,
beware of he who pushes mud in the throats of children.
But kneel to drink with joy at a distance,
then stand and cry like a god to the scarp-mist,
in high might, as your mother before,
with her grave salt under your wet feet,
your small hands loving the clouds,
and that redflame disc rising... rising...
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: evil poems, father poems, children poems, tree poems, green poems, mother poems, joy poems, wind poems, light poems, god poems, rose poems, child poems
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31.
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Flower-Girl, Isleworth Hospital
Like a live signal, a poet should compress her
into a star-cluster in some constellation
for Shaw to admire - for this is another Eliza,
brash, honey-haired, a tawny thruster
straight backed as a Roman fruit girl,
with a skirt blue as the shouting sky.
Her hand of flowers, struck like a sensual torch,
flares in rebellion at the gate.
In a sprat-faced house, rough with kindness,
on a had bed, she will take her lover
with nine eyes and an open kiss
and a curse for all polite relatives.
She is a tawny thruster, this Eliza.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: girl poems, star poems, kiss poems, house poems, sky poems, flower poems
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32.
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For Mary (lost April 5th,1988)
Her beating heart in atoms lies,
so freedom lives when freedom dies.
When moment cannot lengthen day
the pastel flesh must fade away
and leave her friends to agonise
All flowers decay where stems arise,
the fragrance passes and it's wise
to know a rose can never stay
- like Mary.
That body, which was soul's disguise,
the darting flames will carbonise.
My loss the thought that, though I pray,
I miss the words no voice can say,
no mouth can form, no lips devise
- like Mary.
Eric Ratcliffe
Read more: freedom poems, loss poems, rose poems, april poems, lost poems, heart poems, flower poems
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