WE SHALL HAVE RAIN

Pink achillea and blue geranium.

Late at night I travel to Istanbul, courtesy of the magic carpet author Jason Goodwin provides with The Janissary Tree. There, gardens bloom on Iznick tiles of splendid blues, greens and pomegranate reds. I dream of asking Goodwin how he recreates this world of opulent color, singing fountains, bright jewels. Good writers are magicians and I am in awe of their power. Dare I ask this particular magician for an interview? Why not? The worst that will happen is that he will say no. I ask and hold my breath, metaphorically speaking.

I wake up to a sky as grey as a chunk of hematite. The temperature has zoomed into the upper eighties. The air is oppressive. The garden looks dry and exhausted. The round ruffled leaves of the Rond de Nice squash droops forlornly. When is these stony clouds going to resolve themselves into a cooling rain? We have had brief showers for the last three days, so brief they do no more than coax plant roots into coming closer to the surface to absorb a few drops before they evaporate. I go out with watering cans filled with grey water. This is not enough, I know. What my plants need is a series of long drizzles, gentle and sweetly thirst quenching.

The day ends without the promised downpour.

"Later," says the weatherman. "Later."

I labor over sentences. I murder paragraphs. My characters rebel, throw off the alphabet, become mute. I find a poem that is as fresh and cool as if it had just been written. It refershes the soul. And then, joy of joys, Goodwin says yes. What else can a provincial writing gardener want> Rain, perhaps. But has been promised. It will come.

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.

Let us discover some new alphabet,

For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,

The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,

The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,

And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,-

Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,

Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.

There is an oriole who, upside down,

Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,-

Under a tree as dead and still as lead;

There is a single leaf, in all this heaven

Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:

The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught

Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;

There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom

Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.

The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly

Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock

Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail

Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...

And still the syllables of water whisper:

The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait

In the dark room; and in your heart I find

One silver raindrop,-on a hawthorn leaf,-

Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973)