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Today's one is so evocative and beautiful I just had to share it. It's not about rainbows sadly (I'm still waiting to find the perfect rainbow poem... Gerard Manley Hopkins has an unfinished one, but it's not what I'm after...)
But it is about the city, the season, the sounds and light and rain and night. For more about the (rather dashing) Portuguese author, visit PIW here.
The electric lights, it may well be that the electric lights
will prevent the autumn fall
and the bird call at the window,
grey as an overcoat.
The jaw squeezes a verb
and no bird appears,
nothing happens: it’s the autumn
of the falling leaves, that’s all –
no verb can thus fall.
Only the bent,
welded, muffled, cold sound
of a tolling bell,
it may well be that the electric lights
and the stone blocks for example
may well prevent
the irregularity of pavements or the crushing
of hours against each other
it may well be that the shells
of the umbrellas that blur the city
may well draw your name
like in a musical
it may well be that the shops will stay
and the stone slabs will go
and it may well not be
that the rain will insist
in such an iniquitous way.
© 2005, Daniel Jonas
© Translation: 2009, Ana Hudson
And watch Daniel Jonas reading his poems in Portuguese here:
