Rain Song

so beautiful, it hurt

to listen when your rain

what fall, drop, fresh-

water. drawn as the day come

clean across the sky

on an august morning

you walk in, my lover,

storm off the stillest waters.

Boinayel, rain god

against whom I find no purchase

to hold against. your weight

remembers my blood’s duty

to keep the drum’s rhythm,

but it low & I struggle

to live where your rain

cuts me to my bones.

so you beat rain, reminding me

how my grandfather did leave his island,

guided only by the wind, night-stars over his head,

the black & salty sea on the hull of his sloop.

your rain, which soaked a song of fortune

in his bones, your rain song which soothed

him to dreaming the taste of sweet water.

& on the deck, under the sail of that sloop,

the captain found him after the night,

drenched & sleeping, he told him,

“boy you’d be a good sailor,

you got the rain, sea salt,

& night in your blood.”

so Boinayel I dream of your wet-

lipped voice beating:

In the first beginning,

when all this was water,

I, Boinayel, came down

from the night sky to cry

over the land, to bring it relief

from the scorching sun. your ancestors

prayed to me, sang to make me shine,

to make me bring more water for your thirst,

for your gammalamme, for your silver thatch,

for your scipio bush & guayacan to grow strong.

but in the house of the rain gods we don’t speak of rain

water as you do, as if it is only a thing to be held,

to be caught in buckets for cooking or cleaning.

it is you who brings the rain, stirs us waterman

to vexation and pleasure, brings our tears as water

for your bloodshed, your big eye ways of selling

off the land, of holding each other during storms,

of rushing as one rhythm, your ways of killing

the queer water, you refuse to understand

why the mosquito is in your ear at night, crying,

“water, water, everywhere and not a drop for you to drink.”