Rain after rain after rain

Sometimes it rains inside a poem. You can hear the drumbeat, see raindrops collect on leaf and asphalt and tile, feel wet fingers wrap around your soul or relive history as it floats above the words.

In his book, True Life, Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh) writes an evocative rain poem. Rain in Lvov, starts with:

It falls on the Armenian cathedral
and on the Uniate Church of Saint George.
On the opera and on the black house.
Hills vanish in the mist.

and ends with this:

Tram wheels screeched
on their tight tracks. 
And all of us wept
bypasssers and guests
victors and vanquished.

A storm of visuals and emotions. But this poem was inspired by Rain in Krakow by Tadeusz Rozewicz. In the epigraph, Zagajewski quotes the second and third line of the first verse (the translation I have is by Bill Johnston):

rain
falling on the Wawel dragon
on the bones of giants
on Kościuszko Mound
on the Mickiewicz Monument
on Podkowiński’s Frenzy
on Mr. Dulski
on the trumpeter from St. Mary’s tower

Rozewicz closes with:

goodnight
living and dead poets
goodnight poetry

Poetry begets poetry. In an endless spiral.

I don’t know how many poems this sequence of rain song has inspired. But I am compelled to add my own, even in a March that thinks it is May: hot, dry and without the faintest possibility of a shower.

Rain in Bangalore
(after Rain in Lvov after Rain in Krakow)

It falls on July’s rain.
It falls on June’s rain.
The monsoon in only half-done.
Breath is a paper boat.
Grey wells up from grey.

Today’s rain falls on
Thursday’s gulmohars
that slide down 
decades-old bark
onto yesterday’s grass.
The sky of a billion years
enters each drop. 

Somewhere, temple bells ring wet. 
Light leaves as if it was there. 
Clouds bend lower to pray.
Under her umbrella, she gathers
skirt and courage and faith and 
desperation to keep on walking. 

While the city gives up
from its drowning womb,
rats and snakes 
and traffic snarls: the
red light like a bug smashed
against the windshield
bloodied and dripping.
The rain, weapon. The rain, wound.

He watches from a 12th floor window.
What if the sun does not rise again?
What if the moon has been snuffed out?
What if this is the last deluge?
What if there never was an ark?

Chrome and glass mirror -
chrome and glass - mirror
a heaven split again and again by lightning. 

Then it all dissolves and rushes down.
Water tracking water. Into water. 

#Poetry