Lament of the Monsoon Rains
By John Herlihy

The monsoon rains seemed reluctant to appear;
The earth now scorched dry in a perpetual sneer.
You would think the heavens knew of tragedies below;
Evils accumulated out of season from many months ago.
Dust devils whirled like Sufi dervishes on the ground,
Churning into the flame trees with vultures gazing around.
Even the leaves of the trees appeared cracked and dry;
The swaying palm trees wearily bent in a fevered sigh.
When will we be showered with the benevolence of rain?
The villagers marveled at the extent of the devastated plain.

The brilliance of day finally gives up the ghost of light;
Blue heavens now shaded beyond the reach of sight.
The sky took on the sobering attitude everyone knew;
The clouds now gathered overhead into a frothy stew.
The air ripe with freshness to dispel the gathering gloom;
Paddy fields would become nothing but a flooded room.
Rice stalks once stood rooted in the mud in stately stature,
Ripening plump and green giving off a feeling of rapture.
The grains now squeezed dry and crackling at the seams,
Awaiting the monsoon rains to drink from turgid streams.

The sun once shining brightly overhead, hard and brittle;
Clouds in black cloaks darken the plain offering very little.
A sound breaks overhead, like pebbles on a metal roof;
Millions of darts descend from the sky falling as clear proof.
That the lament of monsoon rains has taken over the land;
The sun no longer blinks and the earth is washed of sand.
As if the heavens wept with rains that weep a whole river,
To awaken a dead land by the mercy of a Benevolent Giver.
The illusion persists that the powerful rains will never end;
The grassy plains covered by silvery sheets the heavens send.

What is it about the weather that we hang on its every thread;
It weaves a tapestry of seasonal change until its heart has bled.
As dry as bone, as wet as rain, as hot as fever, as cold as snow;
The weather blames and blesses us in ways that we all know.
The sun has now disappeared as if it had something to hide;
The monsoon dragons have invaded with their imperial pride.
A skirmish has been won and the battle has now finally begun;
Wind howls in protest and the furious sound of rain far flung.
Villagers sleep to the lament of the rains and its incessant shower;
At dawn, they awaken to monsoon grief and its persistent power.

As with every sorrow and set of tears, relief was not far behind;
The monsoon rains emptied themselves of their misery in kind.
Whereas once the clouds had spilled themselves of all they had,
They now abandoned the dark cloaks with which they were clad.
The long drought had finally ended, the cracked leaves were gone;
The vultures circled expectantly in the sky for food to pounce upon.
Flowers sprang up across the plain with every color in the rainbow;
The grasses were now singing in the wind casting their color aglow.
The air full of the scent of jasmine, coffee blossoms, and eucalyptus;
All that had died could now live again, from here to the distant hills.