Summer Rain

Where in the valley the summer rain

Moves crazed and chill through the crooked trees

The briars bleed green, and the far fox-banks

Their sharp cries tangle in sobbing shades.

I hear the sad rinsing of reeded meadows

The small lakes rise in the wild white rose

The shudder of wings in the streaming cedars

And tears of lime running down from the hills.

All day in the tomb of my brain I hear

The cold wheat whisper, the veiled trees mourn,

And behold through windows of weighted ivy

The wet walls blossom with silver snails.

The heron flies up from the stinging waters,

The white swan droops by the dripping reed,

And summer lies swathed in its ripeness, exuding

Damp odours of lilies and alabaster.

In a fever of June she is wrapped and anointed

With deathly sweating of cold jasmine,

And her petals weep wax to the thick green sky

Like churchyard wreaths under domes of glass.

Too long hangs the light in the valley lamenting,

The slow rain sucking the sun’s green eye;

And too long do you hide in your vault of clay

While I search for your passion’s obliterate stone.

Let the dark night come, let it crack of doom

The sky’s heart shatter and empty grief,

The storm fetch its thunder of hammers and axes,

The green hills break as our graves embrace.