June Thunder

The Junes were free and full, driving through tiny

Roads, the mudguards brushing the cowparsley,

Through fields of mustard and under boldly embattled

Mays and chestnuts

Or between beeches verdurous and voluptuous

Or where broom and gorse beflagged the chalkland—

All the flare and gusto of the unenduring

Joys of a season

Now returned but I note as more appropriate

To the maturer mood impending thunder

With an indigo sky and the garden hushed except for

The treetops moving.

Then the curtains in my room blow suddenly inward,

The shrubbery rustles, birds fly heavily homeward,

The white flowers fade to nothing on the trees and rain comes

Down like a dropscene.

Now there comes catharsis, the cleansing downpour

Breaking the blossoms of our overdated fancies

Our old sentimentality and whimsicality

Loves of the morning.

Blackness at half-past eight, the night's precursor,

Clouds like falling masonry and lightning's lavish

Annunciation, the sword of the mad archangel

Flashed from the scabbard.

If only you would come and dare the crystal

Rampart of the rain and the bottomless moat of thunder,

If only now you would come I should be happy

Now if now only.