Culture 26 April 2012 "It Has Rained All Week": a poem by Antony Dunn Sign-up and you’ve set down the things you have to say of love and home and of your baby boy and shut your book and put your pen away and, outside, nothing is but green and grey, so wet with rain that it must never dry. It’s later than you thought, and what remains but this? to walk out past the raspberry canes barefoot, to drop your sweater on the lawn, to cast off everything along the lane, wade into open country and the rain. And at the tree-line turn but once to look at where you’ve come from, if you will, then back into the nearer birch and farther oak and know your skin is stiffening with bark or bristling with fur. The wood is dark and all you know of love and all of pain is falling from you. All you know is rain. This article first appeared in the 30 April 2012 issue of the New Statesman, The puppet master SUBSCRIBE More