David Wheldon
Floods on the Levels
A fainter light
there is, in rain
behind the winter’s day;
rain of further days
unceasing in the night.
The frost withstands
the meagre sun
but must give way to flood
as darkness in abeyance
through the clouded noon.
The floods
make ends of roads.
The bye-ways
find the margins
and are gone.
The place of limits
singles water indivisible
to be the limits’ edge
and the mind to be in clearness
must let grey water
inundate its brim.
The fluid thought
is on green fields
and is amongst the pollard heads
of willows red before the sun
against the greyer sky,
is within the sallows:
fast falling rain
shall come,
fast falling rain.
In flood and fluid thought
I see most clear the year’s end
and find the next
within the years I have known;
the lively elvers in the grass,
the meadowsweet,
the rising lark,
the campion
at the ditch’s edge.
Fast falling rain
shall come,
fast falling rain:
in flood and fluid thought
I see the end
beyond the walls
of drownedness;
Nature shall predict
dividing waters
with keener sight than man;
I am the flood;
sight becomes the drop
of every haw upon the branch
and on each rain-wet sloe
and will become a realm
of displaced birds,
a drying fragment
of a straw, of chaff,
of drying dust
on every willow bole
and every crooked post.
there is, in rain
behind the winter’s day;
rain of further days
unceasing in the night.
The frost withstands
the meagre sun
but must give way to flood
as darkness in abeyance
through the clouded noon.
The floods
make ends of roads.
The bye-ways
find the margins
and are gone.
The place of limits
singles water indivisible
to be the limits’ edge
and the mind to be in clearness
must let grey water
inundate its brim.
The fluid thought
is on green fields
and is amongst the pollard heads
of willows red before the sun
against the greyer sky,
is within the sallows:
fast falling rain
shall come,
fast falling rain.
In flood and fluid thought
I see most clear the year’s end
and find the next
within the years I have known;
the lively elvers in the grass,
the meadowsweet,
the rising lark,
the campion
at the ditch’s edge.
Fast falling rain
shall come,
fast falling rain:
in flood and fluid thought
I see the end
beyond the walls
of drownedness;
Nature shall predict
dividing waters
with keener sight than man;
I am the flood;
sight becomes the drop
of every haw upon the branch
and on each rain-wet sloe
and will become a realm
of displaced birds,
a drying fragment
of a straw, of chaff,
of drying dust
on every willow bole
and every crooked post.
Page(s) 52-53
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