Welcome back to The Daily Poem. I'm David Kern, and today is Wednesday, July 21st, 2021.

Today's poem is by a Welsh poet. His name was Alan Lewis, and he lived from 1915 to 1944.

He is a poet of the Second World War, and he died at 28 during the campaign in Burma against the Japanese,

and the body of work that we have just in

those 28 years is pretty remarkable. One of the better known English language poets of the

Second World War. And the poem that I'm going to read today is called All Day It Has Rained. And that's in

part because today it is just raining incessantly nonstop.

And so it got me thinking about poems about rain.

And so I wanted to share this one with you.

This is a poem that I was looking up the text for and then I realized that Carol Ruhman

actually did write about this poem six years ago in her column for The Guardian,

poem of the week. So I'll share a few comments that she had about this poem six years ago in her column for The Guardian, poem of the week.

So I'll share a few comments that she had about this poem as well.

But here is All Day It Has Rained by Alan Lewis.

All day it has rained.

And we on the edge of the moors have sprawled in our bell tents.

Moody and Dulles Boers. Ground sheets and blankets spread on the muddy ground.

From the first gray awakening, we have found no refuge from the skirmishing fine rain, and the wind that made the canvas heap and flap, and the taut wet guy ropes rave out and snap.

All day the rain has glided, wave and mist and dream, drenching the gorse and heather, a gossamer stream too light to stir the acorns that

suddenly snatched from their cups by the wild southwesterned patted against the tent and our upturned,

dreaming faces.

And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces, smoking a woodbine, darning dirty socks,

...