as now outside the soft small rain is falling.
Falling or fallen. Rain itself is something
undoubtedly which happens in the past.
Whoever hears it falling has remembered
a time in which a curious twist of fate
brought back to him a flower whose name was "rose"
and the perplexing redness of its red.
This rain which spreads its blind across the pane
must also brighten in forgotten suburbs
the black grapes on a vine across a shrouded
patio now no more. The evening's rain
brings me the voice, the dear voice of my father,
who comes back now, who never has been dead.
by Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)
translated by Alastair Reid
