Rain, Everywhere

Tap-water, grimy and dank, maintains the posing flowers like a pretty corpse, on the dead wood of the table-top. Domestic life, under the fizz of electric light. Envious all of the outside: where blankets of rain make sculpture, make symphony, of the dark, London night.

Who can compete with that plash and pulse? Tell me vase, tell me lamp. Tell me hung clothes, usual but damp. Tiny moutains rise and fall every moment on each lake, whilst valleys race from centre to shore. A gust of wind, and they rove back once more. The umbrella of St Paul's has never hosted such a choir; no pottering Priest ever heard such a prayer. No smart banker ever summed your worth, that the city of trees, soaking, always knew. The man in the moon has the best view: a vast sky of aloof cloud-faces, crying cold features, right across our places; without hope or home here, but back down to earth.

Rain, you're ascribed heights and times in the Weather Office. An audit of anorak sales offers another record. As does this. And it is gone now, your gift. But you will return - to eyes, to ears, and to flesh, always uncaught by the written word.