"It Has Rained All Week": a poem by Antony Dunn

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

NewStatesman