The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992

The Rain Guitar

My eyes too high for your touch. 0 let it reach me at the lips' Water-level, the thorns burst Into rain on your wooded grave, the needle plunge Through the skin ofcharmed water and die, that I may speak at last With up-bearing magic Ofthis household, weightless as love." The Rain Guitar -England, 1962The water-grass under had never waved But one way. It showed me that flow is forever Sealed from rain in a weir. For some reason having To do with Winchester, I was sitting on my guitar case Watching nothing but eelgrass trying to go downstream with all the right motions But one. I had on a sweater, and my threads were opening Like mouths with rain. It matte~edto me not at all That a bridge was stumping With a man, or that he came near and cast a fish thread into the weir. I had no line and no feeling. I had nothing to do with fish But my eyes on the grass they hid in, waving with the one move oftrying To be somewhere else. With what I had, what could I do? I got out my guitar, that somebody told me was supposed to improve With moisture-or was it when it dried out?-and hit the lowest And loudest chord. The drops that were falling just then Hammered like Georgia railroad track With E. The man went into a kind offishing Turn. Play it, he said through his pipe. There I went, fast as I could with cold fingers. The strings shook With drops. A buck dance settled on the weir. Where was the city Cathedral in all this? Out ofsight, but somewhere around. Playa little more Ofthat, he said, and cast. Music-wood shone, Getting worse or better faster than it liked: Improvement or disintegration Supposed to take years, fell on it By the gallon. It darkened and rang The Rain Guitar / 383 Like chimes. My sweater collapsed, and the rain reached My underwear. I picked, the guitar showered, and he cast to the mountain Music. His wood leg tapped On the cobbles. Memories ofmany men Hung, rain-faced, improving, sealed-off In the weir. I found myselfplaying Australian Versions ofBritish marching songs. Mouths opened all over me; I sang, His legs beat and marched Like companions. I was Air Force, I said. So was I; I picked This up in Burma, he said, tapping his gone leg With his fly rod, as Burma and the South west Pacific and North Georgia reeled, Rapped, cast, chimed, darkened and drew down Cathedral water, and improved. Remnant Water Here in the thrust-green Grass-wind and thin surface now nearly Again and again for the instant Each other hair-lined backwater barely there and it Utterly: this that was deep flashingTiny grid-like waves wire-touched waterNo more, and comes what is left Ofthe gone depths duly arriving Into the weeds belly-up: one carp now knowing grass And also thorn-shucks and seeds Can outstay him: next to the slain lake the inlet Trembles seine-pressure in something ofthe last Rippling grass in the slow-burning Slow-browning dance learned from green; A hundred acres ofcanceled water come down To death-mud shaking The Strength ofFields / 384 ...