June Thunder Poem by Louis Macneice

June Thunder

Rating: 2.7


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.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Audrey Shirts 04 January 2019

Read this aloud yourself and let the beauty evoked speak to you. Do not listen to the poem. The reader recites the poem in a deadening voice that represses beauty.

1 0 Reply
George J. Carroll 02 September 2006

A melancholy write in a depiction of advancing age with a back dropp of clouds that silouette the lightning flashes and he seems happy if death should come which he apparently waits for.

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