It’s raining stair-rods and chairlegs,
it’s raining candelabra and microwaves,
it’s raining eyesockets.
When the sun shines through the shower
it’s raining the hair of Sif,
each strand of which is real gold
(carat unknown).
It’s raining jellyfish,
it’s raining nuts, bolts and pineal glands,
it’s raining a legion of fly noyades,
it’s raining marsupials and echnidae,
it’s raining anoraks in profusion.
It’s siling, it’s spittering, it’s stotting, it’s teeming,
it’s pouring, it’s snoring, it’s plaining, it’s Spaining.
People look up, open their mouths momentarily,
and drown.
People look out of windows and say,
‘Send it down, David.’
Australians remark, ‘Huey’s missing the bowl.’
Americans reply, ‘Huey, Dewie and Louie
are missing the bowl.’
It is not merely raining,
it’s Windering and Thirling, it’s Buttering down.
It’s raining lakes, it’s raining grass-snakes,
it’s raining Bala, Baikal, and balalaikas,
it’s raining soggy sidewinders and sadder adders.
It’s raining flu bugs, Toby jugs and hearth-rugs,
it’s raining vanity.
The sky is one vast water-clock
and it’s raining seconds, it’s raining years:
already you have spent more of your life looking at the rain
that you have sleeping, cooking, shopping and making love.
It’s raining fusilli and capeletti,
it’s raining mariners and albatrosses,
it’s raining iambic pentameters.
Let’s take a rain-check:
it’s raining houndstooth and pinstripe,
it’s raining tweed. This is the tartan of McRain.
This is the best test of the wettest west:
it is not raining locusts – just.
Why rain pests
when you can rain driving tests?
It is raining through the holes in God’s string vest.
W.N. HERBERT