Friday, January 11, 2008

Rain

After last night's pouring, with thunder and lightning, I was struck by Robert Creeley's poem, The Rain:

The Rain

by Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet

1 comment:

  1. Nice poem. I love the rain (when I'm not walking in it and it's cold and the wind is blowing and I forgot my umbrella--wait a minute. . . maybe I don't like it?!)

    Oh well. Thanks for visiting my blog!

    Here's another poem for you by Edward Thomas also called "Rain." I've always loved its melancholic tone (he was a British war poet writing during WWI).

    Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
    On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
    Remembering again that I shall die
    And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
    For washing me cleaner than I have been
    Since I was born into this solitude.
    Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
    But here I pray that none whom once I loved
    Is dying to-night or lying still awake
    Solitary, listening to the rain,
    Either in pain or thus in sympathy
    Helpless among the living and the dead,
    Like a cold water among broken reeds,
    Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
    Like me who have no love which this wild rain
    Has not dissolved except the love of death,
    If love it be for what is perfect and
    Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

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