8/02/2006

Downpour

As the downpour washes the mountains
into a painting
We follow the rhythm of rain
into millennia of paths
that bring us together.
Tonight, Maria sits by the window
to rub her eyes and make sure
it is just the rain
that blurs her vision.

Back at home, she never cries,
We are just carried away by the rain:
Different time or colors
now look similar.
The mountains, the rivers, the memories,
and many interpretations
of a painting, are rising
from far to near.

We listen to different versions of rain:
It looks like the vineyard in Sicily
where hundreds of folks came to a reading
by an American author. They may not understand
English, but the rain......
He sinks behind the screen of rain, and she rises:
It's like the rain of bullets on the walls
in North East China during the Japanese war
which filled pages of...........
The rain beats the windows harder:
Like the tears of the Russian Jew,
after hundreds of years, still
exile with rain..................

What seems strange in other countries
now becomes familiar.
The rain has no brain to discriminate
the boundaries of nationalities
but fall into everyone's eyes
without announcing
the arrival or departure
of feelings.

From the roots transplanted
it may or may not grow:
in different climate
being neglected,
over or under fertilized,
drought or flood.
All because of the lack of planning
of rain.

We don't plan to read tonight.
Just our hearts are pouring out
with the float of
neither tears nor rain.
It must be something more
than the beginning of
downpour.


1992 New York

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