Yehuda Amichai

The First Rain

The First Rain - meaning Summary

Memory and Cyclical Return

The poem reflects on memory, recurrence, and the tension between forgetting and ritual return. Rain triggers an associative leap from past to present, suggesting that time moves like a trained, unremembering beast. Images of harnesses and a mare fused with their handler suggest roles, constraint, and embodied repetition. The closing lines shift to a sudden, almost sacred panic, where personal or erotic vision brushes against archaic holiness, collapsing private feeling into collective imagery.

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The first rain reminds me Of the rising summer dust. The rain doesn't remember the rain of yesteryear. A year is a trained beast with no memories. Soon you will again wear your harnesses, Beautiful and embroidered, to hold Sheer stockings: you Mare and harnesser in one body. The white panic of soft flesh In the panic of a sudden vision Of ancient saints.

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