Permit us to
refresh your memory: what comes from heaven is always a
blessing, the enemy is not the rain. Rain is the subject of
prayer, the kind gesture of saints. Dear City, explain your
irreverence: in you, rain is a visitor with nowhere to go.
Where is the ground that knows only the love of water? What
are the passageways to your heart? Pity the water that stays
and rises on the streets, pity the water that floods into
houses, so dark and filthy and heavy with rats and dead
leaves and plastic. How ashamed water is to be what you have
made it. What have you done to its beauty, its graceful body
in pictures of oceans, its clear face in a glass? We walk
home and cannot see our feet in the flood. We forget to
thank the gods for their kindness. We look for someone to
blame and turn to you, wretched city, because we are men and
women of honor, we feed our children three meals a day, we
never miss an election. The only explanation is you, dear
city. This is the end of our discussion. There is no other
culprit.
