April 1, it is raining (again)

March went out quietly, like a lamb, as they say, but April came in today with no fooling, just the serious flourish of a late winter or early spring storm.  The sky early this morning was red in warning, as they say, and now it is an even grey, with winds gusting out of the east, shaking the trees, lashing the rain against our windows, and howling past the corners of the house.

It is the first day of Poetry Month, so we need a poem that fits the day, not the little rhyme of April showers bringing May flowers, but something more, like the beginning of this scene from Act III of King Lear:

SCENE II. Another part of the heath. Storm still.

Enter KING LEAR and Fool

KING LEAR

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow.
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks.
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world;
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man.

Fool

O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this

rain-water out o' door.  Good nuncle, in; ask thy daughters'

blessing.  Here's a night pities neither wise man nor fools.

KING LEAR

Rumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire; spout, rain.
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription.  Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure.  Here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man;
But yet I call you servile ministers
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, ho! 'tis foul!

We don’t have any thunderbolts or pernicious children, but we do have a pretty good pretty wild storm today and we have Bill’s words to inaugurate the month of poetry here.  Long may it reign!