Rain

By Michael Glenfield

The rains we knew are a thing of the past –

Deep-delving, dark, deliberate you might say
Derek Mahon, ‘Kinsale’

like background noise, rain

shimmering over nights and days,

lending haloes to street lights

and prisms to the crystal grass, rain

falling on lovers and children and the sea,

undramatic, undemonstrative,

delighting in quiet, rain

like the sighs of St. Geraldine

patron of commuters and the disinterested,
prominently displayed in the National Museum,

not particular, rain

sowing beads onto hair and faces and glass

leaving the whole world dripping,

big coat rain tucking books under lapels,

going on as people worry into the distance

not looking for cosmic sympathy in the key of rain,
choral, falling in minims,
the noise between radio channels,

middle distance in the soundscape, rain

precipitating mutters from pipes, drains, hollowing gutters,

weighing the islands and lakelands, townlands and bogs,

ocean bound, rich in Atlantic,

Monday night rain,

country walk, sandwiches in the car,

park at the viewpoint and sigh rain,

gently persuasive,

at home in the sky, 

the kind of rain we knew well, once.

Michael Glenfield is an Irish poet and critic specialising in Michael Longley. Having taught at Lincoln Bishop University, he is now studying at the University of Oxford. His poems have featured in journals including Acumen and South, as well as the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021 anthology