Drunk
The flood stole in throughout the night,
she listened from an upstairs room
for cattle moaning in their stalls
and those who could no longer speak.
The silence brought the stars to sky
and then the trickle, gulp and suck
that blanketed the roads and fields
reflecting pallor of the dawn.
From window to window she went and heard
the first uncertain song of birds.
And as the dark was washed away
she saw his body floating by
the garden hedge, so peacefully,
as if at last he’d found in death
serenity which life denied.
But when her son had dragged him in,
a sodden, heavy heap of meat,
she pressed her head and rolled her eyes
and howled the awfulness to sleep.
Ray Miller
Fri 29th Nov 2024 13:06
Thanks, David, Stephen. I didn't know the Yeats poem, but I've read it now. Funnily enough, my poem is loosely based on a passage in a novel by D.H.Lawrence, I think it was The Rainbow. Not exact contemporaries but close enough.