Rain and Storms

Trees in the Garden

Ah in the thunder air
how still the trees are!


And the lime-tree, lovely and tall, every leaf silent
hardly looses even a last breath of perfume.


And the ghostly, creamy coloured little tree of leaves
white, ivory white among the rambling greens
how evanescent, variegated elder, she hesitates on the green grass
as if, in another moment, she would disappear
with all her grace of foam!


And the larch that is only a column, it goes up too tall to see:
and the balsam-pines that are blue with the grey-blue blueness of
things from the sea,
and the young copper beech, its leaves red-rosy at the ends
how still they are together, they stand so still
in the thunder air, all strangers to one another
as the green grass glows upwards, strangers in the silent garden.

Summer Morn in New Hampshire

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children's feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth's wet breast.


But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Winter Rain

Every valley drinks,
Every dell and hollow;
Where the kind rain sinks and sinks,
Green of Spring will follow.


Yet a lapse of weeks
Buds will burst their edges,
Strip their wool-coats, glue-coats, streaks,
In the woods and hedges;


Weave a bower of love
For birds to meet each other,
Weave a canopy above
Nest and egg and mother.


But for fattening rain
We should have no flowers,
Never a bud or leaf again
But for soaking showers;


Never a mated bird
In the rocking tree-tops,
Never indeed a flock or herd
To graze upon the lea-crops.


Lambs so woolly white,
Sheep the sun-bright leas on,
They could have no grass to bite
But for rain in season.


We should find no moss
In the shadiest places,
Find no waving meadow grass
Pied with broad-eyed daisies:


But miles of barren sand,
With never a son or daughter,
Not a lily on the land,
Or lily on the water.

The Wind Has Such A Rainy Sound

The wind has such a rainy sound
Moaning through the town,
The sea has such a windy sound, -
Will the ships go down?
The apples in the orchard
Tumble from their tree. -
Oh will the ships go down, go down,
In the windy sea?

O Wind, Why Do You Never Rest

O wind, why do you never rest
Wandering, whistling to and fro,
Bringing rain out of the west,
From the dim north bringing snow?

Three Variants

1

When in front of you hangs the day with its
Smallest detail-fine or crude-
The intensely hot cracking squirrel-sounds
Do not cease in the resinous wood.


The high line of pine-trees stands asleep,
Drinking in and storing strength,
And the wood is peeling and drip by drip
Is shedding freckled sweat.


2


From miles of calm the garden sickens,
The stupor of the angered glen
Is more alarming than an evil
Wild storm, a frightful hurricane.


The garden's mouth is dry, and smells of
Decay, of nettles, roofing, fear…
The cattle's bellowing is closing
Its ranks. A thunderstorm is near.


3


On the bushes grow the tatters
Of disrupted clouds; the garden
Has its mouth full of damp nettles:
Such - the smell of storms and treasures.


Tired shrubs are sick of sighing.
Patches in the sky increase. The
Barefoot blueness has the gait of
Cautious herons in the marshes.


And they gleam, like lips that glisten,
When the hand forgets to wipe them:
Supple willow-switches, oak-leaves,
And the hoofprints by the horsepond.

Storm-Wind


I am finished, but you live on.
And the wind, crying and moaning,
rocks the house and the clearing,
not each pine alone,
but all the trees together,
with the vast distance, whole,
like the hulls of vessels,
moored in a bay, storm-blown.
And it shakes them not from mischief,
and not with an aimless tone,
but to find, for you, from its grief,
the words of a cradle-song.

First Snow

Outside the snowstorm spins, and hides
The world beneath a pall.
Snowed under are the paper-girl,
The papers and the stall.


Quite often our experience
Has led us to believe
That snow falls out of reticence,
In order to deceive.


Concealing unrepentantly
And trimming you in white,
How often he has brought you home
Into the town at night!


While snowflakes blind and blanket out
The distance more and more,
A tipsy shadow gropes his way
And staggers to the door.


And then he enters hastily…
Again, for all I know,
Someone has something sinful to
Conceal in all this snow!

Snow Day

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows


the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.


In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.


But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news


that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear -


the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.


So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.


And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

Neither Snow

When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow,
the distinguishable flakes
blowing sideways,
looked like krill
fleeing the maw of an advancing whale.


At least they looked that way to me
from the taxi window,
and since I happened to be sitting
that fading Sunday afternoon
in the very center of the universe,
who was in a better position
to say what looked like what,
which thing resembled some other?


Yes, it was a run of white plankton
borne down the Avenue of the Americas
in the stream of the wind,
phosphorescent against the weighty buildings.


Which made the taxi itself,
yellow and slow-moving,
a kind of undersea creature,
I thought as I wiped the fog from the glass,


and me one of its protruding eyes,
an eye on a stem
swiveling this way and that
monitoring one side of its world,
observing tons of water
tons of people
colored signs and lights
and now a wildly blowing race of snow.

After The Flood

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided,
A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flowerbells,
and said a prayer to the rainbow,
through the spider's web.


Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,-and
the flowers that already looked around.
In the dirty main street, stalls were set up
and boats were hauled toward the sea,
high tiered as in old prints.


Blood flowed at Blue Beard's,-through
slaughterhouses, in circuses,
where the windows were blanched by God's seal.
Blood and milk flowed. Beavers built.


'Mazagrans' smoked in the little bars.
In the big glass house, still dripping,
children in mourning looked
at the marvelous pictures.


A door banged; and in the village square
the little boy waved his arms,
understood by weather vanes
and cocks on steeples everywhere,
in the bursting shower.


Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps.
Mass and first communions were celebrated
at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.
Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built
in the chaos of ice and of the polar night.


Ever after the moon heard jackals howling
across the deserts of thyme,
and eclogues in wooden shoes growling in the orchard.
Then in the violet and budding forest,
Eucharis told me it was spring.


Gush, pond,-- Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods;-black
palls and organs, lightening and thunder, rise and roll;-waters
and sorrows rise and launch the Floods again.
For since they have been dissipated-oh!
the precious stones being buried and the opened flowers!-it's
unbearable! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her fire
in the earthen pot will never tell us what she knows,
and what we do not know.