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Rain

Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from a play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters


and none of this, none of this matters.


Don Paterson

from Rain (Faber, 2010). Reproduced with the permission of the rights holder.

Tags:

English film and cinema rain SQA Higher texts SQA Set Texts weather
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Don Patersonb.1963

Since the appearance of his first collection in 1993, Don Paterson has emerged a major poet, as well as an important anthologist, editor and critic.
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