Grey rain

The elemental joy of rain
Falls in thick sheets upon my chest
A sensual, lambent cold;
Thin trails of grey pollution
Draw arabesques on my mottled skin.
And the cars
the cars
throw splashing, noisy fountains everywhere.

A grey rain turns brown on the floor
a brown rain slicks oily and
multicoloured
around a garbage-bag, draining
then into the black mouth of a drain.
(They call drains wolves' mouths here, and sometimes,
I guess, they could swallow a child -
or two
or perhaps a half dozen, and
 BURP.)

The rain noises about with itself
noises the wind
the concrete, zinc, steel, leaves, grass, soil.
It's a rain of colourful noise as much as grey water.

Bespattering bemused
(colourful) children and bedraggled
(grey) people, and bedraggled
(colourful) people.
And wet, smelly dogs.
With dirty, dirty water.

A rat swims, dead or alive
downhill.
A cat looks and drools from a
window.

A child scolded, a nanny irate
the child gets the rain
the nanny, does not; sober
as a judge she is

and greyer.