4 December 2012

Rain - Birdoswald

Source

It was misty the other day. A good opportunity to write an educational post about mist formation I thought but then I looked out of the window. No, it was too beautiful, too delicate to dissect into scientific fact. So instead I'll show you this poem by Frances Horovitz.

Rain – Birdoswald

I stand under a leafless tree
more still, in this mouse-pattering
thrum of rain,
than cattle shifting in the field.
It is more dark than light.
A Chinese painter’s brush of deepening grey
moves in a subtle tide.

The beasts are darker islands now.
Wet-stained and silvered by the rain
they suffer night,
marooned as still as stone or tree.
We sense each other’s quiet.

Almost, death could come
inevitable, unstrange
as is this dusk and rain,
and I should be no more
myself, than raindrops
glimmering in last light
on black ash buds

or night beasts in a winter field.

Frances Horovitz, 1980