06.06.07
June Thunder (Louis Macniece)
*Hums and taps keyboard in rhythm to
Sound of Music’s My Favorite Things*
“Raindrops on roses and more raindrops please…
Raindrops on tin roofs and on window sills…”
Uh… what? These are not the correct lyrics?
Sorry, this is not the Maria version, it is the Mira adaptation and raindrops are indeed among my favorite things!
Raindrops… dainty tears… ripples… my liquid being is forevermore charmed and drawn to them.
After the trips, the distressing election, the recitals, the outings, the sweating, I have said goodbye to hot and exciting May, and now it is time to welcome back rainy June. It is once again season for operatic arias, Rachaminov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, Itzhak Perlman and Joshua Bell’s music when they dip their bows in honey… dancing in the rain like a little girl… getting a cold… wearing over-sized sweatshirts… my spinster schedule… my daily practice regimen… teaching my darling students… having lessons with Misha… reading a book without interruptions… hiding and painting inside my room so that Papa will see my work only when it is nearly done… ahh… cozy, familiar, rainy, June… and I’m home… I love it…
June Thunder
by Louis Macniece
The Junes were free and full,
driving through tiny
Roads, the mudguards brushing the cowparsley,
Through fields of mustard and
under boldly embattled
Mays and chestnuts
Or between beeches verdurous and voluptuous
Or where broom and gorse
beflagged the chalkland–
All the flare and gusto of the un-enduring
Joys of a season
Now returned but I note as more appropriate
To the maturer mood impending thunder
With an indigo sky
and the garden hushed except for
The treetops moving.
Then the curtains in my room
blow suddenly inward,
The shrubbery rustles,
birds fly heavily homeward,
The white flowers fade to nothing
on the trees and rain comes
Down like a drop scene.
Now there comes catharsis,
the cleansing downpour
Breaking the blossoms of our over-dated fancies
Our old sentimentality and whimsicality
Loves of the morning.
Blackness at half-past eight,
the night’s precursor,
Clouds like falling masonry
and lightning’s lavish
Annunciation, the sword of the mad archangel
Flashed from the scabbard.
If only you would come and dare the crystal
Rampart of the rain and
the bottomless moat of thunder,
If only now you would come I should be happy
Now if now only.
