RAIN CHARM (for my father) It is not raining now but, later on, Perhaps I’ll hear the purling pulse of rain Tap fingers on my windowpane, become A sort of sounding board, or conch to catch What ribald rumours of the seas translate About a wind-struck chord of water, that I shall not see, unless a cloud exclaim The lilt-lode of the susurrus, inland. We’re not in Autumn now but, say we were, It could be I would hear the gravid drum Of windfall apples; tumbled down to earth Rotten pomes applaud our wistful poems, Or root again the extant core, dispersed, Salvaging seed from old disseverance. There is a rigour to this way the world Goes on, oblique of mind, as in a charm. Today the sky’s all azure. Not a cloud To scarify the countenance of spring Will bat a cirrus eyelash, or enshroud This garden I look out on, pondering Slight words, in lieu of tears, alike to showers. Five years ago today, my father died. It was a mute-lipped mountain, rearranged From limber peaks, on screens, to level lines Forecast his lost breath, and what remained Within a week, was coffined up, assigned Steep rest - in rites rehearsed, like a refrain To water chopped through changing boughs of time. I hear dry-scattered dust carom again Where all our clapped-out, heart-beat hollows rhyme With hardwood, hinged round my old man, engraved - It is a sound the rain recalls to mind. PD
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:19:01 +0000
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