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Neil Powell

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Listening To The Rain

‘How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof,
thinking of home’ – William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying


There were nights I’d like awake, listening to rain
Shuddering on slates or tickling the gutter:
Nights when the universe was rain-defined,
Gaps padded with moisture, and the space
Between here and there confined within a shower.
Nearby cars were slurring round a corner
On the road home: I’d think of warm interiors,
Green glow of dashboards, air soft with tobacco,
Relaxed hands on wheels, and desultory chatter
Of those who know they’ll get to where they’re going.

So, there were nights: and even now I’d feel
Abrupt chilled air of a winter dormitory,
Sash windows open, curtainless, bare floor,
An iron bedstead’s knotty skeleton.
Fitzgerald said its always three o’clock
In the dark night of the soul; for me it was
Round midnight, which bewitching time, intrudes,
My friend, on different myths, - truncated times
Snatched from us on wet garden city streets,
Or gusty emotions in the empty early hours.

Now raindrops on a skylight merge, diverge,
Form tributaries towards the imminent sea
Which in some sunny elsewhere you’re beyond:
On Rhodes it seems it’s 32 degrees,
And that at least’s unenvied; while outside,
The space expands to claim a galaxy,
Inhuman and unbridgeable, where lights,
Flickering on a further shore, are doused
By absences, departures, nights I’ve lain
Beneath a strange roof, listening to rain.

Page(s) 32

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