There will come soft rains

Oops, finally alone at last at my desk (for both children are sleeping, one with a cold washcloth over her fevered brow), I seem to have a surplus of poems I want to share. This one will be read today on Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor's wonderful public radio show. You can find it online here or tune in to KPCC 89.3 FM (Pasadena) at 7:01am (bummer, they moved it from 7pm). Of note is the fact that today is the birthday of Herman Melville.


There will come soft rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-- Sara Teasdale (written in 1967 but strangely apt today n'est-ce pas?)