Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise the Rain

Unknown

Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise the Rain

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.

Let us discover some new alphabet,

For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,

The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,

The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,

And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—

Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,

Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.

There is an oriole who, upside down,

Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—

Under a tree as dead and still as lead;

There is a single leaf, in all this heaven

Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:

The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught

Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;

There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom

Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.

The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly

Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock

Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail

Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...

And still the syllables of water whisper:

The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait

In the dark room; and in your heart I find

One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—

Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Conrad Aiken

Here's a treasure. A poem about the rain and all the little things it touches. A classic macro/microcosm theme. Here rain is the weather that affects us all, brings us together, unifies and levels us. I love the little details, the different perspectives and ways the rain touches the objects and creatures -  like a blessing that literally trickles down. Weeds, flowers, stones, birds, leaf, acorn, mushroom, bee, fly, snail, cobweb, and you and I - we are all touched by the rain. (William Blake would have loved this poem - "To see a world in a grain of sand..." - just his sort of thing.) Then there are the endearing personal touches, "Beloved, let us..", "be ourselves",  and, "in your heart I find one silver raindrop..." what a lovely way to say all things are precious, and that what touches the individual has universal significance as well. Amen to that. 





 

Sonnet

Concetta Flore

Sonnet

Think, love, how when a starry night of frost

Is ended, and the small, pale winter sun

Shines on the garden trellis, ice-embossed,

And the stiff frozen flower-stalks, every one;

And turns their fine embroideries of ice

Into a loosening silver, skein by skein,

Warming cold leaves and stones, till, in a trice,

The garden smiles, and breathes, and lives again,

And further think, how the poor frozen snail

Creeps out with trembling horn to feel that heat,

And thaws the snowy mildew from his mail,

And stretches with all his length from his retreat:

Will he not praise, with all his heart, the sun?

Then think, at last, I too am such a one.

Conrad Aiken 

"Fine embroideries of ice..." 
"The garden smiles, and breathes, and lives again..."
Just beautiful. The smallest sign of hope, of Spring, lifts our hearts.

When You Are Not Surprised

Brian Wildsmith

When You Are Not Surprised

When you are not surprised, not surprised,

nor leap in imagination from sunlight into shadow   

or from shadow into sunlight   

suiting the color of fright or delight   

to the bewildering circumstance   

when you are no longer surprised   

by the quiet or fury of daybreak   

the stormy uprush of the sun’s rage   

over the edges of torn trees

torrents of living and dying flung

upward and outward inward and downward to space

or else

peace peace peace peace

the wood-thrush speaking his holy holy

far hidden in the forest of the mind   

while slowly

the limbs of light unwind

and the world’s surface dreams again of night

as the center dreams of light   

when you are not surprised

by breath and breath and breath

the first unconscious morning breath

the tap of the bird’s beak on the pane

and do not cry out come again   

blest blest that you are come again   

o light o sound o voice of bird o light   

and memory too o memory blest   

and curst with the debts of yesterday   

that would not stay, or stay

when you are not surprised

by death and death and death

death of the bee in the daffodil

death of color in the child’s cheek

on the young mother’s breast

death of sense of touch of sight

death of delight

and the inward death the inward turning night

when the heart hardens itself with hate and indifference   

for hated self and beloved not-self

when you are not surprised

by wheel’s turn or turn of season

the winged and orbed chariot tilt of time   

the halcyon pause, the blue caesura of spring   

and solar rhyme

woven into the divinely remembered nest   

by the dark-eyed love in the oriole’s breast   

and the tides of space that ring the heart

while still, while still, the wave of the invisible world   

breaks into consciousness in the mind of god

then welcome death and be by death benignly welcomed   

and join again in the ceaseless know-nothing   

from which you awoke to the first surprise.

Conrad Aiken

What is it about this poem?! I have a hard time putting my finger on it. One thing is the repetition of words and phrases - and opposing images. I love that "slowly the limbs of light unwind", and "the woodthrush singing his holy holy far hidden in the forest of the mind". So beautiful. Yes, I think that's part of it too, this poem has a Sound, a Weight, a rocking sort of rhythm, and these seem to make the meaning bloom ( I know what I'm saying seems like gibberish, it's so hard to say what I think). And what he's saying seems true. It's indifference to wonder and pain that is our lowest point. When we no longer feel or care.

Hatteras Calling

Elizabeth Magill

Hatteras Calling

Southeast, and storm, and every weather vane

shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,
ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain
howls at the flues and windows to get in,

the golden rooster claps his golden wings
and from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more,
the golden arrow in the southeast sings
and hears on the roof the Atlantic Ocean roar.

Waves among wires, sea scudding over poles,
down every alley the magnificence of rain,
dead gutters live once more, the deep manholes
hollow in triumph a passage to the main.

Umbrellas, and in the Gardens one old man
hurries away along a dancing path,
listens to music on a watering-can,
observes among the tulips the sudden wrath,

pale willows thrashing to the needled lake,
and dinghies filled with water; while the sky
smashes the lilacs, swoops to shake and break,
till shattered branches shriek and railings cry.

Speak, Hatteras, your language of the sea:
scour with kelp and spindrift the stale street:
that man in terror may learn once more to be
child of that hour when rock and ocean meet.


Conrad Aiken 

Stormy weather here lately. 

child of that hour when rock and ocean meet.