Rain Memory
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Cataracts of rain sloshing the cottage windowopen a crack of light, and it's 1981again and rain is dousing the March garden,and word comes my father is dying in Dublin.
Walk through storm-winds and spilling rainas through the last of King Lear, hearingthe Fool cry out it's a naughty nightto swim in, and the old king mutter to himself
I have too little thought on this—near nakedand praying to who knows what. I'm sickin every nerve at thoughts of the hospital,the sight of my own disappearing but still there
father, and what has to come after—thatgathering of muffled looks and voices,the handclasps, hugs, bewildered faces. StillI remember noting, as I left this garden,
among the fields, one blackbird—the songfrom its yellow bill opening our drenched daylike a light-shaft—and the gorse flowers,bright as egg-yolk, and one wary hare
nosing through low-blown wet smoke,his whole knowing life before him. [End Page 136]
Eamon Grennan is the Ferry professor of English at Vassar College. His recent collections of poetry include Renvyle, Winter (2003) and The Quick of It (2005), and his verse has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, the New Yorker, and the New Republic.
