Hot it was, this year, so hot and dry, 
And dusty, the scorching summer searing sun
Seeming to shine forever in the sky,
Days eternally long, which one by one,
Would slowly flow and blend together,
Untouched, regardless of the season's weather.
Days which were just barely broken
By starless, moonless, windless nights.
The only movement in the air
A hot breeze at the dawn, a token,
A gesture of the heat to come, which blight
The crops, the wheat and corn, without a care.

     Outside my window, the clouds,
     Dark and threatening gather in the west.
     Ominous, black like giant shrouds
     Tumbling, thundering towards the land which waiting lies,
     Exhausted They come, never stopping, never at rest,
     Driving the rain and watching as the lightning as it flies.

The drought got worse with every day.
The only clouds that came were white and high,
Too high. It seemed all things conspired
Against the rain. The wind would try to delay
Any clouds that were in the western sky,
While all the time, our sheep expired
Around us, and our cattle. The lack of water
Parched the grasslands burnt and black,
Black as a cinder, and just as dead.
The whole land around us a scene of slaughter-
House: The streams ran dry, their beds would crack.
Where once on the lake were ripples and waves,
Now there was only dust and death, a bed
Of bones and filth and undug graves.

     Silently now, the wind begins to blow
     A gentle mist of rain against the ground.
     The drops form little rivulets and flow
     Slumping Down the window pane, without a sound
     As They touch the dry earth, move so slow
     Past the pebbles, i they’ve found.

What with all the death and drought,
The land went sort of mad.
Half the people gave up any hope
Of ever seeing rain again, expressing their doubt
In drunken brawls, spending everything 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 us all of God’s wrath:
Some prophets, when with a single look
Anyone could see we were already on the path
Of death strode, with all the land a cracking tomb.
Our once green pastures once green, full of dying grass and dying dust,
Our crops and flocks falling in the heat like flies,
And all the trees with lifeless leaves, not lush, invested in of brown,
Their branches borrowing the colour of rust.  
Great prophets: When we are already down
And dying, it’s death the prophet prophesies.

     Already the storm has reached the land,
     The raindrops pounding at the roof and walls
     Against the doors and windows strumming,
     Hitting hard against the earth and drumming
     Down the dust and sun parched sand,
     Rain Running on the wind as down it falls.

One of them was different tack, though,
Who tried to make them change their ways.
With all his talk of penitence, of God and such,
‘Twas rain he feared, and not the long, hot days.
The rain would come, he said, and flow
And deluge the earth entire, and touch
And cover every lonely hill and mountain.
But who would ever listen to a such a man
In days of heat and drought and exhausted nights of dark.
They revelled through the night, no fear of rain
Or death would make them heed his plan
And so, alone he built his useless ark.

     The river has risen and the lake overwhelms and overflows.
     The rain pours down from towering heights
     Without a break, the endless wind will not drop.
     As the flood all around continually 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