The clouds’ unending march besieged the world,

Tempests’ pronunciamentos claimed the sky

And thunder drums announced the embattled gods.

A traveller from unquiet neighbouring seas,

The dense-maned monsoon rode neighing through earth’s hours:

Thick now the emissary javelins:

Enormous lightnings split the horizon’s rim

And, hurled from the quarters as from contending camps,

Married heaven’s edges steep and bare and blind:

A surge and hiss and onset of huge rain,

The long straight sleet-drift, clamours of winged storm-charge,

Throngs of wind-faces, rushing of wind-feet

Hurrying swept through the prone afflicted plains:

Heaven’s waters trailed and dribbled through the drowned land.

Then all was a swift stride, a sibilant race,

Or all was tempest’s shout and water’s fall.

A dimness sagged on the grey floor of day,

Its dingy sprawling length joined morn to eve,

Wallowing in sludge and shower it reached black dark.

Day a half darkness wore as its dull dress.

Light looked into dawn’s tarnished glass and met

Its own face there, twin to a half-lit night’s:

Downpour and drip and seeping mist swayed all

And turned dry soil to bog and reeking mud:

Earth was a quagmire, heaven a dismal block.

None saw through dank drenched weeks the dungeon sun.

Even when no turmoil vexed air’s sombre rest,

Or a faint ray glimmered through weeping clouds

As a sad smile gleams veiled by returning tears,

All promised brightness failed at once denied

Or, soon condemned, died like a brief-lived hope.

Then a last massive deluge thrashed dead mire

And a subsiding mutter left all still,

Or only the muddy creep of sinking floods

Or only a whisper and green toss of trees.

Earth’s mood now changed; she lay in lulled repose,