Roads shining like rivers up hills after rain

Roads shining like rivers up hills after rain,

Climbing the downs from the quicksilvered plain,

Are bright in defiance of all that is true:

Cheaters of gravity, blinding and blue,

 

Leading me nowhere, or into the sky -

Roads that gleam on, if I live or I die,

Roads that transfigure the lost and mundane:

Heavenly wendings, distractions from pain.

 

So take up your load, soldier, stoop for your pack;

The dazzling firmament glows in your track.

There's nothing miraculous. Shoulder your gun.

March to your end through the rain and the sun.

 

Poem by Giles Watson, 2013. The first line is derived from an undated note on a slip of paper among the last pages of the war diary of Edward Thomas: "Roads shining like river up hill after rain." The same idea finds expression in his own poem, 'Roads': "The hill road wet with rain/ In the sun would not gleam/Like a winding stream/ If we trod it not again."

Done