Epiphany

Epiphany, the end of Christmastide, the Magi bring their gifts. Time for one more from Geoffrey Hill, the laureate of rain, charging a drizzly day in the Wyre Forest with beauty and meaning...

Epiphany at Hurcott 

Profoundly silent January shows up 
clamant with colour, greening in fine rain, 
luminous malachite of twig-thicket and bole 
brightest at sundown.

On hedge-banks and small rubbed bluffs the red earth, 
dampened to umber, tints the valley sides. 
Holly cliffs glitter like cut anthracite. 
The lake, reflective, floats, brimfull, its tawny sky.