Before thunder

ON the heaved valley flanks
crops thrust green to unendurable
fecundity and death:
in the hayfield, inexorably
the dry grass is raked in
to the final stacking:
the elms tower sadly
holding within themselves
secret decay in trunk and limbs,
nursing the knowledge
that death already creeps through them.

The thunder-wind blows hollow
down the fireless chimney
and the sky is a cloud
of pale grey-purple patina
powdering old earth-hoarded silver:
in the west, pale streaks
of dull metal wiped clear.

The blackbird's song
is wet crystal flashing
or a steel-bright dagger
piercing my heart:
the exquisite ecstasy
too beautiful for bearing
wounds in its sweetness,
its joy bringing intolerable sorrow.

Evensong. No magnificat
but nunc dimittis—
Oh Lord now lettest thou thy servant
depart—but whence?
And not in peace
nor having seen salvation
but from myself only
from the inward image of death
from my burden shared with the elms.

18 July 1945