good rain
As I was packing up getting ready for bed last night I noticed a soft, whispering sound outside. The ground looked wet. I must admit I had to step outside the door to see if it was raining. It was.
It took me a while to go to sleep, as it often does. The rain started failing a little harder. It wasn't heavy rain, not by a long shot, but the rain was no longer timid.
This morning the sky was clear, although the ground was still wet.
Lying in bed last night, and again this morning, my brain was trying to pull something out of my memory, something about a poem about rain with a good sense of timing. I just pulled one of my old Classical Chinese textbooks off the shelf and found the chapter introducing ten Tang poems, and there it was, near the bottom of the page, 春夜喜雨 by 杜甫:
好雨知时节，当春乃发生。 随风潜入夜，润物细无声。 野径云俱黑，江船火独明。 晓看红湿处，花重锦官城。
I'm not really up for translating poetry, but here goes:
Happy rain on a spring night, by Du Fu
Good rain knows its season, happening in spring. With the wind it quietly enters the night, silently moistening everything. Fields, paths, clouds are all dark, on the river only boat lights. At dawn all is wet, flowers return to the Brocade Master's City.
And that, folks, is why I'm not a literary translator.
But I do appreciate Du Fu's evocation of gentle rain falling over night bringing the springtime rebirth to Chengdu (锦官城/Brocade Master's City is Chengdu).
Gentle weather is a rare occurrence down here in the Roaring Forties, so part of me wonders if last night's gentle rain even happened. But the evidence was there, in wet roads, and in the sound awakening a memory of a poem learned years ago.