After Us

 I don't know if we're in the beginning
or in the final stage.

 -- Tomas Tranströmer

Rain is falling through the roof.

And all that prospered under the sun,
the books that opened in the morning
and closed at night, and all day
turned their pages to the light;

the sketches of boats and strong forearms
and clever faces, and of fields
and barns, and of a bowl of eggs,
and lying across the piano
the silver stick of a flute; everything

invented and imagined,
everything whispered and sung,
all silenced by cold rain.


The sky is the color of gravestones.

The rain tastes like salt, and rises
in the streets like a ruinous tide.

We spoke of millions, of billions of years.

We talked and talked.


Then a drop of rain fell
into the sound hole of the guitar, another
onto the unmade bed.
 And after us,
the rain will cease or it will go on falling,
even upon itself.

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