{"id":179,"date":"2011-02-25T14:41:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-25T14:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=179"},"modified":"2011-02-25T14:41:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T14:41:00","slug":"wn-herbert-is-caught-in-the-night-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wn-herbert-is-caught-in-the-night-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"WN Herbert is caught in the night rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Night Rain in Emprosneros<\/span>

For once the mountains that peer down through the vine at us<\/span>
like giant scientists, sheer aunts with pine-pocked octopus skin,<\/span>
vanished before nightfall behind a mat of tufting grey cloud<\/span>
we reassured ourselves could not mean rain.<\/span>

But rain it did, in darkness, hesitantly, as if unsure of protocol,<\/span>
and scattershot, so that you could hold your hand out<\/span>
and not feel a drop, while beside you the little flame of the oil lamp<\/span>
was precisely sizzled out. And start and stoppingly, so that<\/span>

you couldn't tell whether the towels needed taking in or not<\/span>
and went and stood beneath the separated-out rain, gauging it.<\/span>
Then furiously, for five minutes or so, or so the vine leaves claimed,<\/span>
though that could just have been their patter. Glancing up<\/span>

between the unripe grapes you saw the white belly of the rat<\/span>
who visits here by dusk, then moved the white plastic chairs<\/span>
beneath the plaster eaves, and draped them with the towels,<\/span>
and filled your lungs with the scent of the astonished earth,<\/span>

that freshness compacted of dirt and leaf and air, delicious<\/span>
as chilled fruit, then watched the jasmine flowers being struck<\/span>
over and over, as though the stars were being stung, then lay down<\/span>
and listened to the passage of the clouds throughout the night.<\/span>
<\/p>\n



*Bill Herbert<\/span><\/a> (WN Herbert)  is from Dundee, lives in an old lighthouse in North Shields and teaches Creative Writing at Newcastle University. He is mostly published by <\/span>Bloodaxe<\/a> and is finishing a book of poems and an anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry.  <\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Night Rain in EmprosnerosFor once the mountains that peer down through the vine at uslike giant scientists, sheer aunts with pine-pocked octopus skin,vanished before nightfall behind a mat of tufting grey cloudwe reassured ourselves could not mean rain.But rain it did, in darkness, hesitantly, as if unsure of protocol,and scattershot, so that you could hold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}