Poetry Thursday - August Rain, After Haying by Jane Kenyon

Before the rain, perhaps (painting by Toni Grote (via))

August Rain, After Haying

Through sere trees and beheaded

grasses the slow rain falls.

Hay fills the barn; only the rake

and one empty wagon are left

in the field. In the ditches

goldenrod bends to the ground.

Even at noon the house is dark.

In my room under the eaves

I hear the steady benevolence

of water washing dust

raised by the haying

from porch and car and garden

chair. We are shorn

and purified, as if tonsured.

The grass resolves to grow again,

receiving the rain to that end,

but my disordered soul thirsts

after something it cannot name.

                  - Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)


One poem leads to another. I found this one while looking for information about Jane Duran - it appears in a "poetry workshop" from 2006.

Jane Kenyon was New Hampshire's poet laureate at the time of her untimely death at the age of 47. She was noted for verse that probed the inner psyche, particularly with regard to her own battle against the depression that lasted throughout much of her adult life.  She also explored the cycles of nature: the fall of light from day to dusk to night, and the cycles of relationships with family and friends throughout a long span of years brought to a close by death.

She has been compared with Keats: "like Keats, she attempts to redeem morbidity with a peculiar kind of gusto, one which seeks a quiet annihilation of self-identity through identification with benign things." Find more of her poems here.