The Singing Furies

The yellow sky grows vivid as the sun:     The sea glittering, and the hills dun.     The stones quiver. Twenty pounds of lead     Fold upon fold, the air laps my head.     Both eyes scorch: tongue stiff and bitter:     Flies buzz, but no birds twitter:     Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet,     And naked fishes scarcely stir for heat.     White as smoke,     As jetted steam, dead clouds awoke     And quivered on the Western rim.     Then the singing started: dim     And sibilant as rime-stiff reeds     That whistle as the wind leads.     The South whispered hard and sere,     The North answered, low and clear;     And thunder muffled up like drums     Beat, whence the East wind comes.     The heavy sky that could not weep     Is loosened: rain falls steep:     And thirty singing furies ride     To split the sky from side to side.     They sing, and lash the wet-flanked wind:     Sing, from Col to Hafod Mynd,     And fling their voices half a score     Of miles along the mounded shore:     Whip loud music from a tree,     And roll their pan out to sea     Where crowded breakers fling and leap,     And strange things throb five fathoms deep.     The sudden tempest roared and died:     The singing furies muted ride     Down wet and slippery roads to hell:     And, silent in their captors' train,     Two fishers, storm-caught on the main:     A shepherd, battered with his flocks;     A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks;     A dozen back-broke gulls, and hosts     Of shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts,      Of mice and leverets caught by flood;     Their beauty shrouded in cold mud.