Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) was a poet acclaimed around the world who seems to have passed out of fashion. She wrote clear, short-lined poems like those below but also more complex mystical poems strongly influenced by nature and the poets Blake, Shelley, and Yeats, whom she admired and studied. She has strong links with Northumberland and Canna, both of which were inspirations for her. I’m currently reading my way through her collected poems and finding many find poems.

I 
Death, I repent 
Of these hands and feet 
That for forty years 
Have been my own 
And I repent 
Of flesh and bone, 
Of heart and liver, 
Of hair and skin – 
Rid me, death, 
Of face and form, 
Of all that I am. 

And I repent 
Of the forms of thought, 
The habit of mind 
And heart crippled 
By long-spent pain, 
The memory-traces 
Faded and worn 
Of vanished places 
And human faces 
Not rightly seen 
Or understood 
Rid me, death, 
Of the words I have used. 

Not this or that 
But all is amiss, 
That I have done, 
And I have seen 
Sin and sorrow 
Befoul the world – 
Release me, death, 
Forgive, remove 
From place and time 
The trace of all 
That I have been. 

II 
From a place I came 
That was never in time, 
From the beat of a heart 
That was never in pain. 
The sun and the moon, 
The wind and the world, 
The song and the bird 
Travelled my thought 
Time out of mind. 
Shall I know at last 
My lost delight? 

Tell me, death, 
How long must I sorrow 
My own sorrow? 
While I remain 
The world is ending, 
Forests are falling, 
Suns are fading, 
While I am here 
Now is ending 
And in my arms 
The living are dying. 
Shall I come at last 
To the lost beginning?