22.12.13

The one when we had a wild night

Wow, last night was wild.

I'm 48 and have been with my husband since I was 20. For 21 of those years we've been married. We don't have many wild nights and...

No I can't kid you any longer. The wild night I speak of was just the weather, outside my window I heard the wind howl and the rain lash all night long.

I could tell you how it felt and sounded, but Ted Hughes did it all so much better in his poem Wind. Which I read at school and it has stayed with me ever since.

So here it is, for you.

WIND
This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
Photo copyright  http://www.123rf.com/profile_sculler
Do you have a favourite weather poem?

1 comment:

  1. Great poem, horrid sounding and looking night. Stay warm and a very Happy Christmas to you.

    ReplyDelete

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