free-verse28 lines
Autumn Rain
by D. H. Lawrence (David Herbert Richards)The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;
The cloud sheaves
in heaven's fields set
droop and are drawn
in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face
falling - I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace
Heaven's muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain
of tears, the store
harvested
in the sheaves of pain
caught up aloft:
the sheaves of dead
men that are slain
now winnowed soft
on the floor of heaven;
manna invisible
of all the pain
here to us given;
finely divisible
falling as rain.