The Coming Of The Tribe Poem by Eric Ratcliffe

Under star-clusters in the shell night
my gypsy god is riding in silver
over white auras of sleeping girls
and brown boys, charmed to awake
when the hawk-sun warms their eyes.

He will know the soft coming of voices,
bell tones creeping by red shores,
the movements of tiny-handed rainbow men
toiling on their farms in the blue air.

He has known the amulets of kings,
the drifting cherry clouds of cool evenings
passing over pure milk rocks,
the worn trackways of old flintmen,
the quicksilver of death, the longbarrows
near great moons heavy as amber
- steady entombed wrists of marble
crossed in patience under revolving winds
- the lanterns of a thousand decades
like pinflames before the sun's corona.

From the heart of a cooling galaxy
he has built with hands of crystal
the twin white pillars of Man and Woman.
To their temples over the swan-roads
he has given his blessing.