Rain by John Hoffman - Poems | Academy of American Poets

The rain Let the summer rain that rains
Falls A flood upon the battered stones
Make grow the dry banana trees
and a city Permit the serpent in the garden
is To build a nest on the withered stalk

drowned. But Allow the bird to presage death
And let a universe be sung
A door swung open on the rain

in the garden The serpent may become a tree
grows The rainbow burn an only time
A portent bird fly free:
o rain a flood unhemmed by time

a tree. Dry rains the rain on me my days
No longer me but what becomes

Credit

From Tau by Philip Lamantia and Journey to the End by John Hoffman, edited by Garrett Caples © 2008 by City Lights and Nancy Peters for the Estate of Philip Lamantia. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books.

Author

John Hoffman

John Hoffman was born in Menlo Park, California, in 1928. Little is known about Hoffman’s early life, though he expressed an interest in poetry in his youth, discovering the works of French poets Arthur Rimbaud and the Comte de Lautréamont, who wrote under the nom de plume Isidore Lucien Ducasse, in his father’s personal library.

Date Published

01/01/2008