November

The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land
Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake,
Treed with iron and birdless. In the sunk lane
The ditch - a seep silent all summer -

Made brown foam with a big voice: that, and my boots
On the lane's scrubbed stone, in the gulleyed leaves,
Against the hill's hanging silence;
Mist silvering the droplets on the bare thorns

Slower than the change of daylight.
In a let of the ditch a tramp was bundled asleep;
Face tucked down into beard, drawn in
Under his hair like a hedgehog's. I took him for dead,

But his stillness separated from death
Of the rotting grass and the ground. A wind chilled,
And a fresh comfort tightened through him,
Each hand stuffed deeper into the other sleeve.

His ankles, bound with sacking and hairy band,
Rubbed each other, resettling. The wind hardened;
A puff shook the glittering from the thorns,
And again the rains' dragging grey columns

Smudged the farms. In a moment
The fields were jumping and smoking; the thorns
Quivered, riddled with the glassy verticals.
I stayed on under the welding cold

Watching the tramp's face glisten and the drops on his
coat
Flash and darken. I thought what strong trust
Slept in him - as the trickling furrows slept,
And the thorn-roots in their grip on darkness;
And the buried stones, taking the weight of winter;
The hill where the hare crouched with clenched teeth.
Rain plastered the land till it was shining
Like hammered lead, and i ran, and in the rushing wood

Shuttered by a black oak leaned.
The keeper's gibbet had owls and hawks
By the neck, weasels, a gang of cats, crows:
Some stiff, weightless, twirled like dried bark bits

In the drilling rain. Some still had their shape,
Had their pride with it; hung, chins on chests,
Patient to outwait these worst days that beat
Their crownd bare and dripped from their feet.


now is the month of november.. rainy season!! rain rain almost everyday, so i thought this poem is super fitting for this month haha.. but i like rain.. not those with thunder and lighting, but the light, drizzly, england kind of rain.. cuz i like the melancholic feel of it haha.. has a sort of poetic tragedy to it.. n it makes it so nice to sleep! haha.. so guess im more like the tramp rather than the modern speaker. i dont mind sleeping in the ditch with the light rain. it sounds super comfortable.. provided i have a blanket and pillow, my bolster and my stuffed toy haha. gosh after exams my brain has too much space, so i have to blog abt such seemingly unrelated topics. i hope it starts raining now, so i can sleep in the nice chilly atmosphere...zzzzz
but! stupid ted hughes. i realised i misquoted this poem alot alot of times in my essay! sharks i quoted wrongly, and whats more i said they were from "Rain". hai i hope those angmohs over at cambridge will be half asleep sipping their chamomile tea while listening to the patter of the rain blowing across their moorlands instead of diligently cross-referencing hughes' to spot where we quoted wrongly or from the wrong poem.. haha. but i hope im not the onli one, and at least i bothered to go n memorise quotes, never mind they're all jumbled and mixed up, and im not even throwing away the book lor! i think thats doing hughes a big favour liao. haha. yaya gg to sleep now..