rumble tumble

Eyes on the road at night, sides of a road like rhyme;
the floor of the illumined shadow sea
and shallows with their assembling flash and show
of sight, root, holdfast, eyes of the brittle stars.
And your eyes in the shadowy red room,
scent of the forest entering, various time
calling and the light of wood along the ceiling
and over us birds calling and their circuit eyes.
And in our bodies the eyes of the dead and the living
giving us gifts at hand, the glitter of all their eyes.

He looked at the distance to the bottom of the ravine, bared his teeth and let go the cliff, to jump. But even as he bent his knees, he became aware of a difference in the air, a faint noise, new, unidentifiable. No herd of animals ever rushed so — and now louder, from higher up the ravine, louder, nearer — he stared at the corner and the hunters stopped, uncertain in their fear and pride, and stared too. They recoiled, lost pride and gladness and kept only fear and uncertainty, they moved aimlessly and clutched each other. The noise became a mighty roar. A mad creature of clods and branches, of trapped animals and rolling stones, of muddy water and foam burst round the corner of the ravine like a monstrous paw. It reared and roared higher than a man. It took the hunters, elders, men, and youths, included them, turned them upside-down, whirled them round, washed away weapons and strength. It beat ringing heads against stones, bounced faces in mud, twisted limbs like straws. It was mindless, resistless and overwhelming. And then the front wave of the flashflood was past, the roar diminishing to a vast, pouring sound. The water smoothed, washed sideways up the crumbling walls of the ravine, accepted the falling clods, beat together down the centre and poured on, the colour of wet earth streaked with yellow foam.

In the flickering smoky dimness they listened to the sedgy silence of the night outside on the wasteland that spread out to where the sea crept up on it, insinuating itself into the weak points, making inroads, isolating small islets that were demolished until nothing was left but a jag of rock and sometimes in a crevice a clump of rough grass that craved landward in the wind when the tide was low.

‘The Wind’

Why does the wind so want to be
Here in my little room with me?
He’s all the world to blow about,
But just because I keep him out
He cannot be a moment still,
But frets upon my window sill,
And sometimes brings a noisy rain
To help him batter at the pane.

Upon my door he comes to knock.
He rattles, rattles at the lock
And lifts the latch and stirs the key-
Then waits a moment breathlessly,
And soon, more fiercely than before.
He shakes my little trembling door,
And though “Come in, come in!” I say,
He neither comes nor goes away.

Barefoot across the chilly floor
I run and open wide the door;
He rushes in and back again
He goes to batter door and pane,
Pleased to have blown my candle out.
He’s all the world to blow about,
Why does he want so much to be
Here in my little room with me?