Vitro Nasu

First winter rain by Matsuo Basho

First winter rain–
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat.

Rain Rain Rain
Three Monoprints by Fung Lin Hall

The Rain by Robert Creeley

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quite, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent–
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

Marjorie Perloff on Robert Creeley’s Radical Poetics.