After the long drought,
the rain. Shy drops shivered from a swollen sky,
at first so light, so teasing, the dust
didn’t even skip a beat.
Then came a few more shivers,
a clap of thunder, a flash of thousand torches—
the thirsty earth couldn’t drink
as fast as the heavens fell.
It hammered down as if angry
at having to leave the heights.
Good heavens, it poured—
left, right, unrelenting,
merciless to man, child, and beast.
The lanes turned to wilding rivers,
to swirls where we once walked.
We rejoiced for the rain until
it pounded, and drowned,
and flooded the flats where we lived.
This soul felt the succour
after months of stifling heat.
It listened to the music
of the pounding on the roof,
while the windows wailed silently—
witnesses to a wash-down that became a beating.
The poetry left the soul.
The spring inside was overwhelmed
by the weight of the torrential rains.