Back to Issue 7

Rain by Harold Lorin

Now in the dark bed next to me
Your warmth does not console
Despite that first night in    Piraeus
With that scarf in your dark hair
Promising everything suggesting all things
Defining, implying all that could be.

Even despite the night we were
Shadowed against the Parthenon
Looking beyond Caryatids to the city
Misinterpreting the meaning of the lights
We were on the hoping side of our relation
Inhaling Jasmine, tasting grapes.

Some unnamed thing creates hope and recollection
Gives us words that that tempt us and dismay us.
Now we are on the other side of hoping.
Though there was fresh morning on the pond
Sunset on the birch and the wordless
Rising of the cormorant above the bay.

Tonight the wind breaks summer
And with the breaking wind comes rain.
Hemingway's rain or Hardy's rain or Conrad's rain
A rain of warning and symbol used in another time.
I had forgotten that God sends this rain
The death of Christ was not enough
Nor the sacrifice of Moses
Nor in the East, the intervention of
The disenfranchised Snake
None of this made rain kind or time
Nor love more than an echo in an ancient town.

Sometimes I think that we could get beyond
Could go together naked to the border
Renounce small dinner parties and old friends
And as they say, 'throw away the invitations from the Queen'
Holding time holding hope holding even recollection
Within our clutching hands
We could get back to the Piraeus and be young again
Inhaling jasmine, tasting grapes.