Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/137

 For the storm trapped him ere he left the town Loaded with our week's victuals: the slime clung And licked and clawed and chewed the clogged dragging wheels Till they sunk right to the axle: Saul, sodden and vexed, Like fury smote the mules' mouths, pulling but sweat From his drowned hair and theirs, while the thunder knocked And all the air yawned water, falling water, And the light cart was water, like a wrecked raft, And all seemed like a forest under the ocean. Sudden the lightning flashed upon a figure Moving as a man moves in the slipping mud, Singing, but not as a man sings, through the storm, Which could not drown his sounds. Saul bawled "Hi! Hi!" And the man loomed, naked, vast, and gripped the wheels; Saul fiercely dug from under; he tugged the wheels; The mules foamed straining, straining. Suddenly they went. Saul and the man leaped in: Saul, miserably sodden,