Oracles By Kathleen Raine

From their grave lion-mouths, oracles

With angel-tongues outpour

Continuous the silent flood of time.

But we who cannot stem, but are that flow

Known only that we fall and fall

From source to abyss for ever.

Their serene wisdom is the book of life we write

In blood and ignorance, who are

Incomprehensible utterance of masks of dream.

From “The Collected Poems of Kathleen Raine”

by Kathleen Raine (Counterpoint: 368 pp., $30)