Literature
China Rain
China Rain
April 13, 2010
In China, the rains fall
Down the darkened alleys
Concrete grottoes and hovels
The drops stain the cement
Slowly gather in streams to run
Choked, brown arteries to the streets
Swell sickly in the gutters and vanish
In the dusky, twilit avenues
Vendors gather, those beetling droves
Tanned, gibbous faces, downward turned
Steam motes in the chill air
Clouds swirl, rank and sour, hang above
A boreal, blighted atmosphere
Spring grips the ancient land
As so often she has done
But she slips, falls
Falls into the sooty asphalt
Into the cracking pavement
Into the yawning black gutters
Falls, without ma