Poem of the week

All Day it has Rained, by Alun Lewis

This week’s poem is by Alun Lewis, the most famous of the British poets who died fighting in the Second World War. His Collected Poems is available for lending at the Scottish Poetry Library.

All day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors Have sprawled in our bell-tents, moody and dull as boors, Groundsheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground And from the first grey wakening we have found

No refuge from the skirmishing fine rain

And the wind that made the canvas heave and flap

And the taut wet guy-ropes ravel out and snap.

All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream, Drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream Too light to stir the acorns that suddenly Snatched from their cups by the wild south-westerly Pattered against the tent and our upturned dreaming faces. And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces, Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks, Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox

And mentioned it in the note I scribbled home; –

And we talked of girls, and dropping bombs on Rome, And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees;

– Yet thought softly, morosely of them, and as indifferently As of ourselves or those whom we

For years have loved, and will again

Tomorrow maybe love; but now it is the rain Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.

The Scottish Poetry Library at 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh is open from 10-3pm Mon-thurs and 24/7 online.

See Scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk / e-mail reception@spl.org.uk