The common rain had come again <br />Slanting and colorless, pale and anonymous, <br />Fainting falling in the first evening <br />Of the first perception of the actual fall, <br />The long and late light had slowly gathered up <br />A sooty wood of clouded sky, dim and distant more and <br /> more <br />Until, at dusk, the very sense of selfhood waned, <br />A weakening nothing halted, diminished or denied or set <br /> aside, <br />Neither tea, nor, after an hour, whiskey, <br />Ice and then a pleasant glow, a burning, <br />And the first leaping wood fire <br />Since a cold night in May, too long ago to be more than <br />Merely a cold and vivid memory. <br />Staring, empty, and without thought <br />Beyond the rising mists of the emotion of causeless <br /> sadness, <br />How suddenly all consciousness leaped in spontaneous <br /> gladness, <br />Knowing without thinking how the falling rain (outside, all <br /> over) <br />In slow sustained consistent vibration all over outside <br />Tapping window, streaking roof, <br /> running down runnel and drain <br />Waking a sense, once more, of all that lived outside of us, <br />Beyond emotion, for beyond the swollen <br /> distorted shadows and lights <br />Of the toy town and the vanity fair <br /> of waking consciousness!<br /><br />Delmore Schwartz<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-first-night-of-fall-and-falling-rain/
