Don’t know why
There’s no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Ever since you and I ain’t been together
It’s raining all the time…”
“It’s raining in the streets,
The skies are grey and dark,
And heavy sheets of bitter rain
Are falling in my heart,
I’ll never be warm or dry again
As long as we’re apart…”
Etcetera, etcetera. In poems and songs, rain always seems to be an emblem of sorrow and loss. This may be because the people who write songs and poems usually live in cities, where rain is particularly depressing.
Farmers, and all those who live from the land, are hardly depressed by rain. Rain clouds bring them smiles. Without rain in their fields, nothing will grow.
But in the cities, when the rain comes, it’s hard to find a way to go from one place to another — pedicabs are rare, easy-ride buses are damp and crowded, passing motorcycles splash you, streets get flooded, laundry doesn’t dry. These are minor problems, and only irritating.
What’s actually depressing in the rain is that people lose contact, break appointments, and are left alone to look out their windows and watch the water running down the murky streets.
In the U.S., heavy rains often happen in the fall- cold rains, signaling the approach of winter, when rain becomes snow.
Here, constant rain can signal something worse than that: the beginning of a typhoon.
Typhoons bring not sadness or depression but fear. Fortunately in Dumaguete, damaging typhoons are a rare event. But to many people, the news of a typhoon approaching the Philippines still brings a catch in the throat.
Absent serious storms, rainy weather is actually a welcome relief from the scalding sunshine of summer and the heat, especially for expatriate foreigners, most of whom come from cool climates.
But none of this explains why rain should be a metaphor for loss of love. The only thing common between rain and sorrow or loss is tears.
There are times when everybody cries. When men and women lose what they love, “rain” falls from their eyes.
And then they feel as though they are standing alone on a dark, wet, joyless street, with no one to care, with nothing to look forward to.
And then when they recover, as they usually do, they write poems and songs about the rain.
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Author’s email: john.stevenson299@gmail.com
