Summer Rain Poem by Paul HADFIELD

</></></>The days were bright
But the inevitable rain, the summer long
Came. Below the window, tentative
Over the rough sarking pinned
To the roof trusses, three men
Picked their way, armful of tiles.
Where possible, heads strike
Above the roof's apex, and the rising
Stiff north-west wind. And rain.
By next summer, rain will be hammered
Underneath the tiles.It will remain
In thin, arrogant, fossilised courses
Over the felt's rough surface,
Darkly concealed-a revelation
For the antiquarian whose day will come

In the lee of Inishowen
This deserted seascape was formerly
Referred to as 'Castlerock'
An auspicious caption
For a railway halt which dissolved
When the railway disappeared.
In the distance, along the dry river bed,
Mountains appear to swell
Out of this hostile dust-bowl: the Paps of Jura.
Odd that they take their name
From the impenetrable mass
Linking Rockall to the Scottish mainland:
At what was once high tide. From time
To time, occasionally, yet for no obvious reason
A cow will strand there.

And the rain returns
Refracting the lines
Of receding tides, through imperfections
In Victorian glass:
men are still, there: large tattered pigeons
Washed out of work. Labour is measured
By gaps in the days' clouds
Today as they advance, spasmodically
Reconciliation may not
(Between the eye and the glass,
The sea and the shoreline
Men and their uncomfortable closeness)
Have a metaphor