The rain in Eltville

The rain in Eltville,
same rain as everywhere else,
drops of water mingled with dust
evaporated from God knows what reservoir,
the same rain but different, as I listen to its drumming:
this rain is for me.

While the tin windowsill echoes the other side of the wall,
someone is taking twenty veronal,
my heart shakes at the tenderness in someone’s eyes,
and there are always the scrawny arms of my nephews in Berlin.

I sit here in the lee of the roof
and I can put on a coat to go outside,
but it’s hit me long ago, it will drown me,
the rain of madness, of love, the rain of poverty,
the rain in Eltville.

Günter Eich, Angina Days: Selected Poems, Michael Hoffman (trad.), Princeton University Press, 2010.