RAIN

The rain types out
90 w.p.m. of another life
Against the windows of the night
Lifting up the blinds
You have a badly developed print
Hazy smoke rising
From branches across a pier
Through the glass lane
Someone you know keeps moving
You stand there
Confused forgetting which plane
You’re waiting for
You see the graveyard through the bus window
In the rain and you’re writing
The same letter for over a year
Your legs cross and uncross
In the movies the radio
Keeps reporting the same news
You have never understood
Any of this you are almost asleep
Your life is this think you have
You’re trying to read pages of rain
But in your sleep you only hear
The pages turning and then finally
It’s over you go for a walk
You switch to filters
The weather knocks you out
You smoke for company in the dark
You’re living these photographs
A series of still-lifes
Framed by years by feelings
Slowly you realize you’re getting old
You’re falling asleep
And you keep repeating the same scene
Half asleep going through rooms
Later just as you are almost there
It reappears
Here in this other life
That the rain keeps erasing.

Deborah Deutschman
The New Yorker
May 13, 1972