The Thursday Poem

Young Woman Reading by a Window by Delphin Enjolras


Rain - Birdoswald

I stand under a leafless tree
more still, in the 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
(13th February 1938 - 2nd October 1983)

from the book: Poem for the Day One