Opening Remarks
Summer is effort and labour and struggle. Through this labour and struggle we sow seeds of our deeds in the soil of earth nature. These seeds will wait for their hour but first the soil must be prepared. It must be softened and made ready for the sowings to emerge in the right season. The earth must consequently undergo the needed purification that would wash away the hard crust and help the inner things to emerge. Rains symbolise Grace, they bring the needed succour, they bring life. They also symbolise purification that is often a difficult labour.
Life-giving streams
Next through its fiery swoon or clotted knot
Rain-tide burst in upon torn wings of heat,
Startled with lightnings air’s unquiet drowse,
Lashed with life-giving streams the torpid soil,
Overcast with flare and sound and storm-winged dark
The star-defended doors of heaven’s dim sleep,
Or from the gold eye of her paramour
Covered with packed cloud-veils the earth’s brown face.
At first the rains are very welcome. They bring the much-needed respite from the labour and the heat of tapas, of the summer noons. At the same time it shakes off the tamas that tends to settle when we are tired. It comes as a life-giving stream from the heavens that cools the earth, lights up the night sky through the lightnings, wakes us up with thunder and storms while concealing from us the beauty and brilliance of the sky and the sun (the golden eye of the paramour).
Armies of revolution
Armies of revolution crossed the time-field,
The clouds’ unending march besieged the world,
Tempests’ pronunciamentos claimed the sky
And thunder drums announced the embattled gods.
The shafts of rain are compared to the armies of revolution. They do in fact till the soil and turn it over in its own way. The clouds and the tempest and drums of thunder as if declare the battle of the gods. It is symbolic of the inner battle between all that is true and good and beautiful as against all that is dry and false and ugly.
Heaven’s waters
A traveller from unquiet neighbouring seas,
The dense-maned monsoon rode neighing through earth’s hours:
Thick now the emissary javelins:
Enormous lightnings split the horizon’s rim
And, hurled from the quarters as from contending camps,
Married heaven’s edges steep and bare and blind:
A surge and hiss and onset of huge rain,
The long straight sleet-drift, clamours of winged storm-charge,
Throngs of wind-faces, rushing of wind-feet
Hurrying swept through the prone afflicted plains:
Heaven’s waters trailed and dribbled through the drowned land.
It is as if a traveller from unquiet distant seas had come to disturb us. He came as a warrior casting javelins (rain shafts) and lightning rods were joining the edges of heaven. It is a vivid description of rains comparing it to a revolutionary army with its sudden swift rushes and hurrying feet thereby dribbling the land. In fact wars and battles knead the earth through such strong means thereby preparing it for the new creation that follows the destruction.
Closing Remarks
Rains cleanse the earth sometimes gently sometimes swiftly but always in the end leave her fresh and new as if after a proper thorough bath.
