Sellers, Robert E.

English

University of New Mexico

New Mexico Quarterly
Volume 17 | Issue 3 Article 15
1947
Hymn to Rain
Robert E. Sellers
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Sellers, Robert E.. "Hymn to Rain." New Mexico Quarterly 17, 3 (1947). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol17/iss3/15
POETRY
Then took the other, a steep road up,
And having perhaps less useful function,
Because it was rocky-just rocks showed up;
Though as for ,that both roads slowed up
Me and my double in conjunction.
And both, diverging, stretched my hopping
Parallel props. (One prop paced second.)
,Oh, I split my Yal}kee underproppingl
Better more wood than logic chopping;
Better than two :roads one'unreckoned.
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
Two roads bath taken make double sense.
As for keeping one for another-day,
What counts, I figure, is does it pay?
It's that has made all the difference.
ROBERT STALLMAN
HYM'N TO RAIN,,·
The dry godappears in Mexico.
Display your Hag
And let no one cry.
"I, the dry god, have come,
Have come again to the dry land,
The land rich in sacrificial blood.
In the primitive dawn I was god."
God, your deeds are beyond knowing.
:aut among us, you,
You have entered our flesh
And made us of yo~rself.
Who, then, dares provoke the gods?
• Based on Hymno a Tlaloc, a Spanish translation of the
Aztec Nahuatl. •
1
Sellers: Hymn to Rain
Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1947
GNEW MEXICO QUARTERLY REVIEW
"He who angers me
" Finds no good of me. '
My fathers took by the head
The tigers and the serpents."
If I could find a place
Where the clouds go in abundance,
"'There clouds are space
And space is the cloudy mansion
Of the god of clouds, ..rlaloc,
There would I arise from the dry ground
And cry with a strong voice.
ROB E R T E. S ELL E R S
THE APPARITIONS
Under the rain the Capitol dome is white.
The old. men's voices coldly drone and fall
Through corridors below this calm auroral light
That brightens like the borealis from the pole.
Through the wet haloes around the lights
The twigs of swaying saplings enter bare
And blackly glistening in the winter light
Seem to shatter frozen circles in the air.
Lightning flickers yellow in the western sky
And light and shadows cross the window pane
As wa~el" rippled slowly in the wind
Is swept by moving shadows of the rain.
.Within the mansioned dome the laughter falls
As dying echoes fall when bells have tolled -
.Or ringing chimes that swell the New Year in
Have struck the autumn triumph of the Old.
PAUL B. NEWMAN
2
New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 17 [1947], Iss. 3, Art. 15
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol17/iss3/15


Hymn to Rain

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