Emily DiamandOur ancestors didn’t leave us words for this.
Rain, downpour, deluge
Do not describe cars and central heating
Become invisible, argued-over carbon –
Heated air that holds the weight of oceans
And, drop by millions of drop,
Returns it to us,
Filling fields with the fish-coloured
back and forth of sudden lakes,
Reversing gravity to thunder upwards from a drain.
This rain, heavier than memory,
Overtakes us,
Using the roads that we made for ourselves
And leaving us, with hands gripped to the wheel,
Poor captains of our unexpected ships.
‘Bomb’ won third prize in the 2017 Resurgence Poetry Prize.
Emily Diamand is an author of children’s fiction who writes fantasy adventure stories with an environmental theme. Her first novel Flood Child won The Times prize for children’s fiction in 2008, going on to be published worldwide. She has since published three more novels and her work has been shortlisted for the Branford Boase award, several regional awards and has been nominated for the Carnegie prize.
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