The Rain

The Rain
By Robert Creeley

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?  It is

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.

 

Used by permission.  Copyright 1983 by Regents of the University of California. (University of California Press)  From:  Americans’ Favorite Poems by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz; © 2000 by Robert Pinsky; W.W. Norton and Company, New York