This poem, for Day 23 of Paul Brookes’ April poetry challenge, was inspired by Anjum Wasim Dar’s painting Drink.

These dark days

These dark days
I see no beacon on the rocky shore
no light at tunnels’ end

beneath the fields
forced with crops
the soil is silent.

I see the glass half-empty
where the wind whistles no turnstones
the only flood is blood

and in this tormented sky
of cold cloud cross-hatched with rain
where are the swallows?