What is this light in which the faintly drawn clouds wait white in the upper sky? A canopy of light surrounds them; below are infinite shades of grey, occasional dingy wisps. Some shades are stronger, bluish—deeper, lighter. One of the higher clouds is dusty, something of faint brown about it from the diffused orange of a distant sunset: a trace of that removed splendor.
Lighting flickers over the city, like crooked, gleaming metal rods, and thunder rumbles like an iron sheet.
The the world is all a sound of dripping.
Umbrellas bear upon them the light of the sky, the gleaming sidewalks too. The sense of it is metallic, the skies are impenetrable behind the moving clouds one sees. Another light is seen from the lights coming on in stores and street lamps. Rain and electric lights, as the day is finishing. The light above was sober, majestic, melancholy, and withdrawing.
Before electricity it would have been followed by darkness warded off by firelight, and the sound of a rilling world brimming with another opposite of flame. But now, what is the urban sense of rain? The city drinks it, umbrellas bob and gleam, the little lights we make become so many and the world a chandelier. The noise seems somehow hushed, and on the dry table before us, by the spoon, the comfortable coffee steams.
