| The Hurricane (1918) by |
| from Poetry, March 1918 |
The Hurricane[]
Hurricane. Courtesy Robert Paterson's Weblog.
The wind soured into night.
Acid of a narrow rain
Pitted the sentries’ paces
With spits of cold.
The wind grew in hoarse breaths
With the night’s age,
Until the night was wind,
And darkness spouted on the prone earth
From the West’s nozzle.
Wind and night, roaring
Like mated beasts,
Pressed huge bodies
On the bulging walls
Of tied Sibley tents.
One by one the double-headed pegs
Pulled with a souseling kiss
From the rain-weak earth.
A rope snapped; a wall flap
Jumped; the tent heaved,
Bulged upward
With scared awkwardness,
And fell on a broken tripod.
The wind, night, rain,
With huge onwardness,
West, south, east, north, poured itself
Bitterly on the flat earth.
Three Nature-whipped sentries,
Tied into their ponchos,
Pried through the heaving night
Like tired swimmers.
See also[]
This poem is in the public domain