Lie Down And Listen To The Rain

Leaving Combe Martin in the rain ...

Looking back on Water Mouth in the rain ...

The sun shone briefly over Ilfracombe ...

And in Torrs Park a brisk wind was blowing ...

This is Croyde Bay beyond Woolacombe, where I camped on a 'Holiday Park' campsite for the night. It was pretty dire. I could find nothing to eat. There was no hot water in the Portakabin showers. Though the rain held off momentarily ...

Here's a poem about rain, taken from one of my treasured poetry collections, The Green Book Of Poetry, edited by Ivo Mosley. This poetry anthology, published in 1993, is little known, and I love it. It's a book I used to sell when working as a freelance publishers' sales agent in the 1990s. Mosley visited Japan back in the 1970s. He then read Japanese at Oxford (there are lots of Far Eastern poems in the book) and subsequently became a stoneware ceramicist in Devon. Its a constantly surprising collection - don't look in here for all your usual anthologized pieces - and each poem is linked by Mosley's own perceptive, humanistic, eco-aware commentary. Although this poem from the anthology describes the rains of spring, it was easy for me to identify with the same feeling during the rains of Devonshire's late summer...

Third Day Of The Third Month, Rain: Written To Dispel My Depression

I go out the door; it's raining, but I can't go back now,
so I borrow someone's bamboo hat to wear for a while.
Spring has tinted ten thousand leaves, and I didn't even know;
the clouds have taken a thousand mountains and swept them away.

I look for flowers in the village
but they hide from me on purpose;
and even when I find them, they only sadden me.
It would be better to lie down
and listen to the rain
in the spring mountains -
a quick downpour, then a few scattered drops.

As spring dies, the scenes grow more beautiful:
the poet will remember them for the rest of his life.
Level fields overflowing with green -
wheat in every village;
soft waters reflecting red -
flowers on every bank.

YUNG WAN-LI, Chinese, 1127-1206, translated by J CHAVES