| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | The Rain-crow | | By H. L. Davis |
| | From “To the River Beach”
WHILE women were still talking near this dead friend, | |
| I came out into a field where evergreen berry vines | |
| Grew over an old fence, with rain on their leaves; | |
| And would not have thought of her death, except for a few | |
| Low sheltered berry leaves: I believed the rain | 5 |
| Could not reach them; but it rained on them every one. | |
| So when we thought this friend safest and most kind, | |
| Resetting young plants against winter, it was she | |
| Must come to be a dead body. And to think | |
| That she knew so much, and not that she would die! | 10 |
| Not that most simple thing—for her hands, or her eyes. | |
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| Dead. There were prints in the soft spaded ground | |
| Which her knees made when she dug her tender plants. | |
| Above the berry leaves the black garden and all the land | |
| Steamed with rain like a winded horse, appeared strong. | 15 |
| And the rain-crow’s voice, which we took for a sign of rain, | |
| Began like a little bell striking in the leaves. | |
| So I sat in the rain listening to this bird’s voice, | |
| And thought that our friend’s mouth now, its “Dead, I am dead,” | |
| Was like the rain-crow sounding during the rain: | 20 |
| As if rain were a thing none of us had ever seen. | | | | |
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