4/27/2012

All Day It Has Rained - By Alun Lewis

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. 

2 comments:

  1. I have never sen this poem. Thank you so much for posting it. Nothing tells the horrors of war more than the poetry that juxtaposes it with the beauty of Life.

    I'm so grateful for people like you who post the things that matter without letting anger rule their emotions, but stay the course in a way that allows the truth to be told when and where it's so sorely needed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glad you liked the poem, Teresa. It is regarded by the modern British Eng. Lit. critics as a milestone poem of its era. Alun Lewis is an important poet of the 20th century and imo the foremost poet of the second world war.

    ReplyDelete