Ravens! Great Ravens!

Your damning cawls deride

histories sweeping beneath

your blackened wings –

Shatter the day

O flags of night,

rend with shadows

this innocent light

Ravens! Great Ravens!

Your drumming clouds arrive

swoop’d sudden sheer,

hissing travails

from no place

t’ the other –

Shatter the day,

O flags of night,

rend with shadows

this innocent light

Ravens! Great Ravens!

Your beaks clatter open

disgorging the sweat

of straining dismay

the clack of bones

promised this day –

I’ve seen the sheen

of your eyes the laughter

that rimes the living

your passing but an illusion –

we stop, we stare

we curse your cold winds

in knowing your flight’s path

wheeling you round us

again, oh, for ever again!

Ravens

Collitt (b.978)

GotM, UK Trade, p.462-3