Hot it was, this year, infernally dry, 
Eternally dusty,  the summer searing sun
Seeming to shine overlong in the sky,
Days lengthened, lingering one after one,
Would  ooze and meld together,
Untouched, contemptuous of the customary weather.
Days seemed barely interrupted, broken
By starless, moonless, windless nights.
The only agitation in the air
A febrile flurry ‘fore the dawn, a token,
A signal of the searing soon to come, the blight
Of crops, our wheat, our rye: Nature did not care.

     Outside my window, the clouds,
     Somber and sinister, stack against the west.
     Portentous, pitch dark, smashed shrouds
     Tumbling, thundering towards the land which lies
     Exhausted. Unappeasable, never at rest,
     They ride the rain, regarding lightning as it flies.

The drought became more ruinous every day.
The only clouds that came were waveringly high,
Too high. It seemed all gods conspired
Against the rain. The wind endeavoured to delay
Any haze or mist seen in the distant sky,
And as it connived, our sheep expired
Around us, and our cattle. The want of water
Withered the grasslands burnt and black,
Black as cinders, and just as dead.
All around, the land was just a slaughter-
House: Streams expired, then clay up and crack.
Where a lake used ripple and wave,
Now was only dust and death, a bed
Of bones and filth and undug graves.

     In silence the wind begins to blow
     A merciful mist against the ground.
     Drops pattern tiny rivulets which flow
     Slumping down the window pane, no sound
     As they touch the thirsty earth, slide so slow
     Past the pebbles, following old furrows they’ve found.

What with all the death, the drought,
The whole country surrendered, went sort of mad.
Half the people gave up any hope
Of ever seeing rain again, expressing their doubt
In drunken brawls, spending all they had
On booze and prostitutes and dope.
The rest, pretending prophets and their parasites, took
To shouting at the others words of doom,
Warning all of us of the creator’s wrath:
Such soothsaying, when with a single look
Three blind men could see already the path
That death strode, the land a cracking tomb.
Pastures once green, decaying grass and dying dust,
Heated herds and flocks failing, survived by flies,
Lifeless leaves, not lush, invested in brown,
Branches borrowing the colour of rust.  
Great prophets: When we are already down
And damned, it’s doom each prophesies.

     The storm reaches impatiently for the land,
     Condensation cavalcading over roof and walls
     Knocking doors and windows strumming,
     Hitting hard against the earth and drumming
     Down the dust and sun hardened sand,
     Rain running and railing the wind as it falls.

One man took a different tack, though,
Who tried to turn them, change their ways.
With all his talk of penitence, of God and such,
‘Twas rain he feared, and not the blistering days.
The rain would come, he said, and flow
And deluge the the earth entire, and touch
The tops and more of every lonely hill and mountain.
But who would ever listen to a contradictory man
In days of incandescence and exhausted nights of dark.
They roistered nightly in despair, no fear of rain
Seemed worse, no death could cower them to any plan
He told from God. Alone he built that useless ark.

     The river is roused, the lake overwhelms and overflows.
     Rain torrents down from transcendent heights
     Unbroken; The endless wind refuses to drop.
     The deluge continues, by inch constantly grows.
     Already it has rained for five days and nights.
     I wonder if the rain will ever stop.

“Seven days passed, when all the springs of the great depth beneath broke through, and the floodgates of heaven were opened, and it rained forty days and forty nights, and then the waters of the flood covered the whole earth.”

February 1975