Robert Rorabeck - Softly As The Softest Pain

Rain plinks the shingles of a house
Where I’d sure like to live;
Rain engorges too the ever, ever waves
Of the sea persuading the mangroves
And the blind white birds tucked in
Where I’d sure like to live;
And rain finds a way in through the green
Grottos,
The bottle caps the ancient baseball:
Where there are virgins enraptured in pieta
And mussels, where
Noses uncork salty perfumes, where shallow
Reefs palpitate with silent green kelp;
And there are pagan footsteps reaching down
From where she left her husband stranded
With the green cannons,
And started down, all in a mess; she said
She was going to Spain, but it was only her
Body that wept,
And the milky white horses watching from the
Distant stones seemed not to sympathize
And she came down that way,
While I waited holding my breath for a wish
In some dark and lovely cave,
The rains kind of wondered about
Stepping softly, or happening upon her shoulders
As softly as the softest pain
Where I’d sure like to live.

Robert Rorabeck

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