to the falling Oxford rain. And on waking I see it paint the junction outside my house shiny black and turn the Victorian bricks garish pink and the shrubbery a green so vernal it stammers the eye. And I remember youth and my coffee-shop whispers of Baudelaire and his rain-streak prison bars, Heinrich Boll and the Irish skies leaking onto his journal. I see again that rain in Durban that coated everything in view, all instantly drenched and dripping and even the lines I tried to write. And London days at the desk, watching the plane trees shower the tilting pavements through the long afternoons. All those journeys and dashes when there was a chance to meet, running stooped beneath the cloudburst, crashing through cafe doors into light and noise and then talking, spouting for hours. Sharing worthless secrets and book visions, seeding all with my camouflaged hopes and clues. In sanctuary, two faces over the cups. Is it still like that now? The kids run in, order their drinks and lock eyes to their devices. But they must watch for signs from friends and others, the codes, the suggestion of what stays hidden in those moments alone when they’ve listened to the rain? Those times of drizzle murmur and mystery. Oxford rain is all rain, I feel today, at my dawn window.
Opening line, with apologies to MacNeice.
