It's Poetry Month! -- Billy Collins

[chamuda]

This poem evokes such memories of my time visiting Kathmandu . . . enjoy! :-)

Rain
By Billy Collins

It was raining all day in Kathmandu,
first a mist, then a downpour,
but still, the wide street leading to the palace
was thick with people,
all waiting for the thumb of a delegate,
whose forehead had been smudged red
by the thumb of the king,
to smudge their foreheads red
on this, the holiest day of the year.

Only a few would receive the touch,
a merchant told me in his shop
as he rolled out rug upon rug--
hundreds of blinding stitches per square inch--
and another agreed as he opened
a folded sheet of paper and poured out
polished blue stones on a velvet cloth.

But still they waited, hunkered down,
under flapping plastic and broken black umbrellas
hoping to make a connection
the way one might hope to be connected
by a long chain of handshakes
to Babe Ruth or Alexander Pope
only without the need to stand
in a puddle all day soaked to the skin.

On the ride back to the hotel,
in the backseat of a taxi
I blackened one of my thumb pads
with a pen and then pressed it to my forehead,
to show the world my belief
that even though we will all turn to ashes,
there may be an afterlife for some of us--
a realm of ink and wind-blown shelves,
a dominion of book spines and blown out candles.

And that became the central tenet of the religion
I founded that day in a green
care driven by a suicidal Nepalese
in a bizarre hat with orange flowers around his neck.

The central and only tenet, I resolved,
as I looked out the rain soaked windows,
at the thin children,
the holy men shuffling along in their flip-flops,
carts piled with apples,
and on one sidewalk, groups of shiny wet ducks,
huddled together in the rain,
presided over by men wagging long, pliant sticks.
 

Comments

[wintercreek]

I always, always love reading Billy Collins. :)