Rain on Southern Avenue

Rain on Southern Avenue

The fresh blue-and-white guardrails along the avenue glisten under a sudden three-o'clock cloudburst. Road dust becomes paste against the kerb while a passing bus sprays muddy water toward the pedestrian crossing.

The Poem

They repainted the street lamps blue and white—
the color of civic order,
or an idea of neatness that lasts three monsoon weeks.

From the third floor,
you can watch the mustard oil in the tea-stall's pan
splutter against the drizzle.
The boy behind the counter covers the kettle
with an overturned aluminum plate.

A yellow cab stalls at the pedestrian zebra.
Its wiper blade leaves an arc of street-dust,
a wet crescent on glass
through which the driver watches
the traffic constable in his yellow cape.

The banners on the lampposts—
Trinamool, printed on cheap vinyl—
curl at the edges like parched banana leaves,
the ink running slightly where the corners fold.
The rain hits the iron railing.
It hits the rusted tin roof of the flower shop.
It hits the hair of the woman carrying three plastic tubs
up the concrete stairs of the corporation school.

In the window of a passing minibus,
a clerk rests his temple against the pane.
For four seconds,
while the signal stays red,
our eyes meet through two layers of glass
and forty yards of falling water.

He does not wave.
I do not move my glass.
We simply acknowledge
that the afternoon has turned cold,
that the rain smells of soot and wet stone,
and that both of us are waiting
for something simple to clear.

Then the diesel engine coughs.
The bus clears the gutter.
Behind it, the puddle closes over itself,
and the blue railing returns upside down in the water.