Fragment Friday - Rainy Memorial Day Weekend Edition

Dad in his Army uniform - 1952

Since we are getting rained on this Memorial Day Weekend, five rain poems for your enjoyment. 

Monotone

by Carl Sandburg

 

The monotone of the rain is beautiful,

And the sudden rise and slow relapse

Of the long multitudinous rain.

 

The sun on the hills is beautiful,

Or a captured sunset sea-flung,        

Bannered with fire and gold.

 

A face I know is beautiful—

With fire and gold of sky and sea,

And the peace of long warm rain.

April Rain Song 

by Langston Hughes

Let the rain kiss you

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops

Let the rain sing you a lullaby

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk

The rain makes running pools in the gutter

The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night

And I love the rain. 

Morning Rain

by Tu Fu

A slight rain comes, bathed in dawn light.

I hear it among treetop leaves before mist

Arrives. Soon it sprinkles the soil and,

Windblown, follows clouds away. Deepened

Colors grace thatch homes for a moment.

Flocks and herds of things wild glisten

Faintly. Then the scent of musk opens across

Half a mountain -- and lingers on past noon. 

The Rain

by Robert Creeley

All night the sound had

come back again,

and again falls

this quite, persistent rain.

What am I to myself

that must be remembered,

insisted upon

so often? Is it

that never the ease,

even the hardness,

of rain falling

will have for me

something other than this,

something not so insistent--

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet

with a decent happiness. 

A Drop Fell On The Apple Tree

by Emily Dickinson

A drop fell on the apple tree,

Another on the roof;

A half a dozen kissed the eaves,

And made the gables laugh.

A few went out to help the brook,

That went to help the sea.

Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,

What necklaces could be!

The dust replaced in hoisted roads,

The birds jocoser sung;

The sunshine threw his hat away,

The orchards spangles hung.

The breezes brought dejected lutes,

And bathed them in the glee;

The East put out a single flag,

And signed the fete away.