Robert Creeley: The Rain

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Waterfall in the Rosenlaui ravine, Switzerland: photo by McIntosh Natura, 2007

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

Upper Lehman Creek, Great Basin National Park, Nevada: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 2006

Robert Creeley: The Rain, from For Love, 1960