Rain Song

By Khaled Mattawa b. 1964 Khaled Mattawa

After Al-Sayyah

The radio blares “Dialogue of Souls,”

and the woman who hated clouds

watches the sky.

Where is the sea now? she asks.

Where is it from here?

What is its name?—

this rain on a morning ride to school,

winter, my seventh year,

my father driving

through rain, his eyes fixed on a world

of credit and debt. On the

radio, devotion to

the lifter of harm from those who despair,

knower of secrets with the knowledge of certainty.

Not even the anguish of those

years, the heavy

traffic, cold and wind could have

touched me. I was certain the palm

holding me would be

struck again. Chance allows

for that and for stars to throb

in reachable depths.

Filled with grief bordering happiness,

I didn’t care if I was safe,

whether the storm

was over, only that it came, the slash

of lightning, the groaning sky,

and the storms we made,

how rain stripped everything of urgency,

how to the lifter of harm rise

those who despair.

Khaled Mattawa, "Rain Song" from Zodiac of Echoes. Copyright © 2003 by Khaled Mattawa. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Zodiac of Echoes (Copper Canyon Press, 2003)

Biography

Born and raised in Benghazi, Libya, poet Khaled Mattawa relocated to the United States as a teenager in 1979. He received an undergraduate degree in political science and economics from the University of Tennessee; an MA and an MFA from Indiana University, where he also won an award from the Academy of American Poets; and a PhD from Duke University.

Influenced by Milan Kundera and Federico García Lorca, as well as the Arab . . .

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