Poem
Pauline Stainer
The Raven Master
The Raven Master
The Raven Master
Young ravensin the White Tower,
cross-lit, conspirational.
He is teaching them to talk –
calls them
an unkindness of seven
as if remembering
their prophetic tongues
leading wolves to prey
the deer stepping
through tall blue mist
to water unseen
the speech of birds
picking memory clean.
© 2008, Pauline Stainer
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
Pauline Stainer
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1941)
Pauline Stainer has always worked outside the metropolitan poetry community. Yet she won first prize in the Stroud Festival poetry competition in 1984, and has won major awards in several other competitions, including the TLS and the King’\'s Lynn, Cheltenham, Leek, Hastings and York festival competitions. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1987, and came to wider notice with her quiet...
Poems
Poems of Pauline Stainer
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The Raven Master
Young ravensin the White Tower,
cross-lit, conspirational.
He is teaching them to talk –
calls them
an unkindness of seven
as if remembering
their prophetic tongues
leading wolves to prey
the deer stepping
through tall blue mist
to water unseen
the speech of birds
picking memory clean.
From: Crossing the Snowline
The Raven Master
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