Anne Barbara Ridler Poems

Since we through war awhile must part
Sweetheart, and learn to lose
Daily use
Of all that satisfied our heart:
...

Lovers whose lifted hands are candles in winter,
Whose gentle ways like streams in the easy summer,
Lying together
...

We thought they were gulls at first,
while they were distant-
The two cranes flying out of a natural morning,
...

Now that you lie
In London afar,
And may sleep longer
Though lonelier,
...

Out from his bed the breaking seas
By waking eyes unseen
Now fall, aquatic creatures whirl
And he whirls through the ambient green.
...

Woman s Voice
Perhaps you find the angel most improbable?
It spoke to men asleep, their minds ajar
For once to admit the entrance of a stranger.
...

Under cool trees the City tombs
extend, and nearer lie
stones above Blake's and Bunyan's bones
to Vivian's working days than I.
...

Now is the pause between asleep and awake:
Two seasons take
A colour and quality each from each as yet.
The new stage-set
...

Nothing is lost.
We are too sad to know that, or too blind;
Only in visited moments do we understand:
It is not that the dead return ---
...

Beyond the Chiltern coast, this church:
A lighthouse in dry seas of standing corn.
Bees hive in the tower; the outer stone
Pared and frittered in sunlight, flakes with the years:
...