The Great Flood.

Mad, like all boys, for war,

at least for the safe spectacle of it,

as from a plush seat in the cinema,

I recall gazing out at the garden,

at the heavily incoming raindrops,

at the pounding they gave the path,

already under a good inch of water,

at the explosions and momentary craters,

at the domes that bubbled up and floated

only to be burst in turn by a fresh hit,

so intense was the mighty barrage.

And how I hoped it might go on and on,

yes, for forty days and forty nights,

filling the garden, spilling over the walls,

till, in the end, finally ceasing,

the very rooftops were barely visible.

My poor father's house!

How he always dreaded water!

Of course, whatever about others,

I never doubted that I should survive.

But why did I invite such cataclysm?

Did I hate school that much?

Yes! Let that building, ever so high,

be submerged, with the loss of many staff.

Did I deplore the whole order of things?

Or, being a boy, hopelessly a boy,

did I just crave drama at any cost?

Now I am myself a house owner,

someone with a stake in stability.

Yet I cannot look at such a downpour

without remembering that boyhood urge,

those impotent apocalyptic daydreams

about inundating an unsatisfactory world.