Poetry Inspiration

Poetry Inspiration

Poetry Inspiration

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  • Created Fri Sep 24, 2010 5:06 am

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Poem of the Week #38

1 post in this topic.

  1. THE RAIN STICK
    By Seamus Heaney

    Upend the rain stick and what happens next
    Is a music that you never would have known
    To listen for. In a cactus stalk

    Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
    Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
    Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

    And diminuendo runs through all its scales
    Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
    A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

    Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
    Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
    Upend the stick again. What happens next

    Is undiminished for having happened once,
    Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
    Who cares if all the music that transpires

    Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
    You are like a rich man entering heaven
    Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

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Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.
— Rumi