Storm ( edited version)

 

Spent all evening alone on the strand

watching a storm’s elbows resting on the horizon,

but now its shoulders are rising.

Once, God’s eye was the centre of every storm;

I feared the Himalayan masses of His charcoal-coloured anger;

they throw the earth to its knees.

The sea, wearing requiem black, is a writhing mass,

the birds have all disappeared down a hole

and the cattle in the fields are humming nervously to themselves.

I can feel a stinging in the molecules of the air 

as the clouds roll in on the wheels of their blue undersides,

coming, rumbling over distant rocks, coming.

I must hurry, lock myself away, shiny bright conductor that I am.

I must dig myself a burrow;

hide myself from the war-making God of the sky.