[ai] piled [ɪ] stiff [ʌ/ ʊ] just [ɒ] socks [i:] each [əʊ] motes [e/ eə:] when

[ɑ:] barn [ei] lay [ʊə/ u/ u:] two [au] mouse [æ] sand [ɔː/ ɔɪ ] corn

The Barn

Threshed corn lay piled like grit of ivory
Or solid as cement in two-lugged sacks.
The musty dark hoarded an armoury

Of farmyard implements, harness, plough-socks.

The floor was mouse-grey, smooth, chilly concrete.
There were no windows, just two narrow shafts
Of gilded motes, crossing, from air-holes slit

High in each gable. The one door meant no draughts

All summer when the zinc burned like an oven.

A scythe's edge, a clean spade, a pitch-fork's prongs:

Slowly bright objects formed when you went in.
Then you felt cobweb clogging up your lungs

And scuttled fast into the sunlit yard -

And into nights when bats were on the wing
Over the rafters of sleep, where bright eyes stared
From piles of grain in corners, fierce, unblinking.

The dark gulfed like a roof-space. I was chaff

To be pecked up when birds shot through the air-slits.
I lay face-down to shun the fear above.

The two-lugged sacks moved in like great blind rats.