A Dance for Rain

Listen to:

A Dance for Rain (4:25)

by Witter Bynner 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Used with permission from The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry,
which retains full rights to the text of this poem. 

Painting "Embers" by Tony Abeyta. 

http://www.tonyabeyta.com/

You may never see rain, unless you see

A dance for rain at Cochiti,

Never hear thunder in the air

Unless you hear the thunder there,

Nor know the lightning in the sky

If there’s no pole to know it by …

They dipped the pole just as I came,

And I can never be the same

Since those feathers gave my brow

The touch of wind that’s on it now,

Bringing over the arid lands

Butterfly gestures from Hopi hands

And holding me, till earth shall fail,

As close to earth as a fox’s tail.

I saw them, naked, dance in line 

Before the candles of a leafy shrine;

Before a saint in a Christian dress

I saw them dance their holiness,

I saw them reminding him all day long

That death is weak and life is strong

And urging the fertile earth to yield

Seed from the loin and seed from the field.

A feather in the hair and a shell at the throat

Were lifting and falling with every note

Of the chorus-voices and the drum,

Calling for the rain to come.

A fox on the back, and shaken on the thigh

Rain cloth woven from the sky,

And under the knee a turtle-rattle

Clacking with the toes of sheep and cattle —

These were the men, their bodies painted

Earthen, with a white rain slanted;

These were the men, a windy line,

Their elbows green with a growth of pine.

And in among them, close and slow,

Women moved the way things grow,

With a mesa-tablet on the head

And a little grassy creeping tread

And with sprays of pine moved back and forth,

While the dance of the men blew from the north,

Blew from the south and east and west

Over the field and over the breast.

And the heart was beating in the drum.

Beating for the rain to come.

Dead men out of earlier lives,

Leaving their graves, leaving their wives,

Were partly flesh and partly clay,

And their heads were corn that was dry and gray.

They were ghosts of men and once again

They were dancing like a ghost of rain;

For the spirits of men, the more they eat,

Have happier hands and lighter feet,

And the better they dance the better they know

How to make corn and children grow.

And so in Cochiti that day

They slowly put the sun away

And they made a cloud and they made it break

And they made it rain for the children’s sake.

And they never stopped the song or the drum

Pounding for the rain to come.

The rain made many suns to shine,

Golden bodies in a line

With leaping feather and swaying pine.

And the brighter the bodies, the brighter the rain

As thunder heaped it on the plain.

Arroyos had been empty, dry,

But now were running with the sky;

And the dancers’ feet were in a lake,

Dancing for the people’s sake.

And the hands of a ghost had made a cup

For scooping handfuls of water up;

And he poured it into a ghostly throat,

And he leaped and waved with every note

Of the dancers’ feet and the songs of the drum

That had called the rain and made it come.

For this was not a god of wood,

This was a god whose touch was good,

You could lie down in him and roll

And wet your body and wet your soul;

For this was not a god in a book,

This was a god that you tasted and took

Into a cup that you made with your hands,

Into your children and into your lands —

This was a god that you could see,

Rain, rain in Cochiti!

The Lighted Window

Listen to:

The Lighted Window (1:21)

by Sara Teasdale 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

He said:
“In the winter dusk
When the pavements were gleaming with rain,
I walked thru a dingy street
Hurried, harassed,
Thinking of all my problems that never are solved.
Suddenly out of the mist, a flaring gas-jet
Shone from a huddled shop.
I saw thru the bleary window
A mass of playthings:
False-faces hung on strings,
Valentines, paper and tinsel,
Tops of scarlet and green,
Candy, marbles, jacks—
A confusion of color
Pathetically gaudy and cheap.
All of my boyhood
Rushed back.
Once more these things were treasures
Wildly desired.
With covetous eyes I looked again at the marbles,
The precious agates, the pee-wees, the chinies—
Then I passed on.

In the winter dusk,
The pavements were gleaming with rain;
There in the lighted window
I left my boyhood.”

There Shines the Morning Star

Listen to:

There Shines the Morning Star (:58)

by Wallace Stevens 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

There shines the morning star! Through the forlorn

  And silent spaces of cold heaven's height

  Pours the bright radiance of his kingly light,

Swinging in revery before the morn.

The flush and fall of many tides have worn

  Upon the coasts beneath him, in their flight

  From sea to sea ; yet ever on the night

His clear and splendid visage is upborne.

Like this he pondered on the world's first day,

  Sweet Eden's flowers heavy with the dew;

And so he led bold Jason on his way

    Sparkling forever in the galley's foam;

  And still he shone most perfect in the blue,

    All bright and lovely on the hosts of Rome.

First published in The Harvard Advocate, LXVII, 2, 10 Apr 1899 

I Believe a Leaf of Grass

Listen to:

I Believe a Leaf of Grass (:45)

by Walt Whitman 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

from Song of Myself     

31

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars,

And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg

    of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,

And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,

And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,

And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.


* chef-d'oeuvre - a masterpiece, especially in art or literature

Huge Vapours Brood Above the Clifted Shore

Listen to:

Huge Vapours Brood Above the Clifted Shore (1:01)

by Charlotte Smith 

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,
Night o'er the ocean settles, dark and mute,
Save where is heard the repercussive roar
Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot
Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone
Of seamen, in the anchored bark, that tell
The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone,
Singing the hour, and bidding "strike the bell."
All is black shadow, but the lucid line
Marked by the light surf on the level sand,
Or where afar, the ship-lights faintly shine
Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land
Mislead the pilgrim; such the dubious ray
That wavering reason lends, in life's long darkling way.

A Thrush in the Moonlight

Listen to:

A Thrush in the Moonlight (:53)

by Witter Bynner

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

In came the moon and covered me with wonder,
Touched me and was near me and made me very still.
In came a rush of song, like rain after thunder,
Pouring importunate on my window-sill.

I lowered my head, I hid it, I would not see nor hear,
The birdsong had stricken me, had brought the moon too near.
But when I dared to lift my head, night began to fill
With singing in the darkness. And then the thrush grew still.
  And the moon came in, and silence, on my window-sill.