Wednesday 17 April 2013

All Day It Has Rained by Alun Lewis


 

All Day It Has Rained

All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors
Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,
Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground
And from the first grey wakening we have found
No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain
And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap
And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.
All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream,
Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream
Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly
Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly
Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces.
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers - I saw a fox
And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; -
And we talked of girls and dropping bombs on Rome,

And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;

As of ourselves or those whom we
For years have loved, and will again
Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.

And I can remember nothing dearer or more to my heart
Than the children I watched in the woods on Saturday
Shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard's merry play,
Or the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o' Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty - till a bullet stopped his song.

Alun Lewis :
 
 
I thought of this poem today, as we have had rain since before I got up this morning.   Now it has stopped for a while, and a Blackbird is singing from the apple tree on the lawn.  I thought I would share this with you.

The small river in spate feeds into the Cothi, and marks the ancient border of the Tally Abbey lands (the adjacent cottage is called "Monachdy" - "Monk's House") and there was once a small grange of theirs very close, which was ruinous by mid-Victorian times and eventually used as a stable before being broken up and used for building stone (we have one or two pieces here - our house being on a direct trackway to Monachdy).

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