"Thoughts From A Foreign Land" The Original

Malta as the rains come. Photo by Neil Howard

In my last entry I mentioned a sort of poem, reflection thing I had published in the Malta Independent a while back which is where this blog got its name from. Since then I have realised that really very few people knew what I was talking about there. So here it is "Thoughts From A Foreign Land." the original- nothing to do with Madagascar, its about Malta:

There is a particular smell in England when it rains. It is the smell of big clouds raining onto fresh grass and the smell of lakes and rivers merging with the waters of the sky. The smell is new and clean and promises new life. Back home the rain has no grass to fall on and no space to fill. Our parched land soaks up the meagre offerings from the sky and the first rains disappear beneath the soil. The smell of rain in my homeland is that of an ancient earth being woken by the drumming of droplets on a baked surface. It smells heavy and dark, like a starless night or a dusty day.

The rains of England are bright and blue, where the water brings only clean landscapes. At home the rains are sometimes red with the sandy offerings from African winds. These rains explode onto the horizon and then disappear as fast as they came, leaving behind their foreign soils to remind us of distant lands. Sometimes our rains are deep and grey filled with the weight of our endless seas. These rains come rolling over the waves to batter and bruise the small island we call home, ripping chunks from its ragged edges, returning our land to the deep that possesses it.

The rains of England come from up high, from blank skies indifferent to the life below. The people of these skies look up, straining at some unknown horizon and sigh in the knowledge that somewhere, beyond the grey, the rain is slowing and their land is being returned to the light. In my land the rain is sent ton the people, to saturate the parched land and awaken the sleeping rocks. The skies that bring the rains are low and menacing as they surround the island in an ancient siege. Deep clouds of darkness unleash their fury on an island that has forgotten their purpose, reminding them that summer must end.

The rain in England is polite and quiet, seeping through streets and pattering on skylights. The voice of the people who ceaselessly predict, quantify and criticise the offerings of the oblivious blue, drown out the sound of its arrival. But at home the rains are preceded by the thundering of the gods with their brutal forks which divide the heavens. The undulating light cleaves our world in two as it heralds the unapologetic arrival of the rains. At home the rain thunders onto the scorched landscape and the houses shake beneath their flat roofs.

Yet the people of England resent the polite waters which grace their homeland, berating and cursing it for inconveniencing their busy lives. But the people of my land turn their sun-sore faces to the sky and smile at the passion of their horizons. As the atmosphere descends onto villages and fields the locals turn their thoughts to the Alla who is providing them with this explosion of vitality.

As a little girl I remember my mother holding her trembling child as rolling thunder shook my bones, explaining that it was only God moving the furniture to be ready for winter work. As I trace the droplets of foreign English rain to the bottom of my window pane, I see my father, eyes bright, laughing at how the island houses welcome the rain to drip and splutter through their limestone roofs and under their wooden doors, as though seeking shelter within our honest homes.