Gentle Rain!!

... You have withheld it, O God, from Your earth and from Your servants — and so You have withheld goodness and giving...

And You have withheld from men the warmth of the hearth.

O God!

How the hearts have longed for it.

The hearth in the house sits in desolation; there is no fire in it... sad, forsaken.

In the corners of the house it asks itself:

Where, I wonder, are the palms of hands?

It is as if my heart were dying of this frost!!

... And the spring at home in the village is bewildered; it does not know why it has sunk deep into the earth...

There is not a drop of water in it.

And as it remembered things, the rock, at this season, would be pouring with life,

and the crossings and the paths, time after time after time...

And not one grain of the good has sprouted yet,

and on the face of this Your servant, the tiller of the good, there is a grim scowl.

An unbelieving blasphemy almost slips from between his lips...

though his heart and his tongue have known nothing but prayer,

and his mouth does not know the taste of blasphemies.

Pour it down, O God, pour it down!

For the hearts have withered from its withholding.

Pour it down, for the plow longs for the soil,

and the hand of our neighbor in the village — this idleness cuts into it.

Pour it down, O God, for the earth is thirsty,

and our wells have gone dry... and water with us is scarce.

O gentle rain of bounty,

pass over our land and pour down;

anoint it with the blessings of heaven.

For there is no soil on earth better than our soil.

Pour down, gentle rain of bounty, pour down.

And tomorrow is the appointed time of the good, with the first waking —

God willing.