A History of Rain

1.

I marvelled at the squid’s mantel,
The sloth’s curled hook,
The magenta lips of orchids.

Behind me barbed feathers
Tore air to turbulence
And then were still.

The soluble sky thickened
As grief heats an eye
To astonished blindness.


2.

You who love me best,
    Have you traced my pulse
       Through city walls?
  
I was lost already, I retched
    As oil plumed through my blood.

The clouds are still falling
    Huge and angry wounds.
   
Your heart is an executive
    Who remembers nothing.     

My face is the face of a man
    Who looks down amazed 
       At the murdered thing
His stained hands
       Open like hunger.


3.

It will not lack colour – 
consider the intricate brachiation of silica,
pale spicules green with cyanide algae – 
conifer needles in snow, their colours
unaccountably reversed – 
or the butterfly lustre of sulphur lakes.

Will your eyes blur at this beauty
so unlike you? No, you have long dissolved, 
you, your reflections, your aqueous desires,
into the flame-coloured sky.