Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Poem of the week: Autumn Rain by DH Lawrence

Intensely alive to the details of the natural world, Lawrence here combines the energy of his free verse with formal invention 

Fallen leaves in autumn.
Fallen leaves in autumn. Photograph: Tim Ockenden/PA
Autumn Rain

The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;


the cloud sheaves
in heaven’s fields set
droop and are drawn


in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face


falling — I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace


heaven’s muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain


harvested
in the sheaves of pain


caught up aloft:
the sheaves of dead
men that are slain


now winnowed soft
on the floor of heaven;
manna invisible


of all the pain
here to us given;
finely divisible
falling as rain.


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