THE RAIN HITS THE CITY

Way up
High,
Spiralling,
It is waiting
And watching;
The Rain is gathering its forces,
Wild and whirling and whiling time
In its swarming, darkling orbit;
But wheeling
Without warning,
Down
It comes.

The Rain
Hits
The City
Hard,
Its hailish teeth mechanical as sharks’,
Hammer and rivet sky to street in a swooping lock,
Fast and cold,
And then the rain rains upwards,
Bouncing ravenously back at itself,
Insatiable,
Invincible,
The Rain roves
And threatens the fat banks stuffed with money,
Dins above the throb of the night-shift machinery
And the pulse of traffic is drowned by its drumming,
Making of its desperate wipers, a locust mockery.

With no abatement
The rain keeps on;
Dives off ledges and bridges:
Never dies
As it pocks the costive canal,
The Rain defies;
Stabbing the dark and lonely parks,
It batters blossom out of aching trees
And floods all routes of the shallow pipes and gutters.

Dust is thus turned into streaming scum
And holy gargoyles choke;
Drains spume,
Spate:
The Rain is swilling out the City’s mouth
East and west,
North and south,
Whilst behind blurring windows
Men cannot rest
As they shiver through these early hours,
Until suddenly the Rain
Stops.

The City is thrown into sodden black relief,
Left like some colossal Ark,
Awaiting some undeserved deliverance.
Daybreak
Over the towers and spires,
And a dark bird now flies out,
Bearing litter in its beak.
There is no rainbow.


(1983)


Even with 'free verse', almost always, some kind of form emerges as I write, though not necessarily or even usually, a traditional form. Most of the shaping of metre and rhyme in my work is of my own device. Even in a poem like this one, where the lines begin and end is vitally important, although there is no overall regularity beyond the typographical trick of making the print resemble a storm-cloud structure.

I had in mind here the financial district of London (‘The City’) with the rain as an elemental nemesis which periodically purges the obesity of the banking system. All these years later, it now seems very topical in the worst recession since The Great Depression.

A few years ago we went on The London Eye and, as we approached the top, a tremendous storm broke out – as you can see in the photograph that Lisa took of me. Below us, the city darkened and there was a real feeling of apocalypse in the air.