Wall and Pine: The Rain

Now the god of rainy August hangs his mask

among the city’s spires and balustrades

and stone clocktowers half-effaced in clouds.

On Park the first reflecting pool dims

with a thousand smelted-silver circle-rims,

while west on Fifth a modiste scatters leaves

in fall vitrines, and felt-browed mannequins

resign the world with gestures of disdain.

Now in the Cloister’s high parterres the rain

floods copper gutterings, boxwood, terraced urns

and mottoes. “The weather turns.” Clamped to their pier,

the smiling Gaul, the murderer Clotaire,

and Isaiah, green-throned, water-cowled, exchange

their fine-lit ironies for rotes of pain.

Copyright Credit: Anne Winters, “Wall and Pine: The Rain” from The Displaced of Capital (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004). Copyright © 2004 by Anne Winters. Used by permission of the author.

Source: The Displaced of Capital (The University of Chicago Press, 2004)