Rain
By Don Paterson
May 19, 2008
I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;
one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame
to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,
and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,
so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,
I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:
forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters
and none of this, none of this matters.
Published in the print edition of the May 26, 2008, issue of THE NEWYORKER : : : : : : :
‘Rain’ by Don Paterson describes the way that rain acts as an equalizing force capable of washing away one’s concern for the past. The poem can be uplifting in mood, suggesting that we can be “washed clean” and renewed, but it is also dismissive of our plight: “none of this, none of this matters.”A film that opens with atmospheric views of rainfall will always be a winner for the poet. Why? It does not matter how the rain comes as long as it is a deluge. It needs to be the only thing in the opening shot. This way there is no dialogue or score to interrupt its steady falling. He continues on to say that it doesn’t matter how bad the film gets from there on out, as long as there was rain at the beginning. What is it about this cinematic image that holds such appeal for him? The references to film and rain also relate to life in general. The speaker is using rain as a way to remove the damage of previous experiences and return to a purer state of being. The “ink, the milk, — the blood,” it is all forgotten. In the larger scheme of the film, or more importantly of life itself and they do not matter.
These vague images have all been “washed clean with the flood.” The rain is a purifying force that takes away the drama, tragedy, and complications of life. It is a clean slate to begin again on. Written by one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets, this poem is a meditation on the various uses of rain in films, written in rhyming (and half-rhyming) tetrameters. : :
“Rains ” By Don Paterson : : Information Appreciation and poem Analysis Presented by V Jayaraj Pune India August 27 , 2022 : :::
MADHU MALTI 