Poem for Wednesday and Hurricane Isaias

After The Storm
By Boris Pasternak
Translated by Lydia Pasternak Slater

The air is full of after-thunder freshness,
And everything rejoices and revives.
With the whole outburst of its purple clusters
The lilac drinks the air of paradise.

The gutters overflow; the change of weather
Makes all you see appear alive and new.
Meanwhile the shades of sky are growing lighter,
Beyond the blackest cloud the height is blue.

An artist's hand, with mastery still greater
Wipes dirt and dust off objects in his path.
Reality and life, the past and present,
Emerge transformed out of his colour-bath.

The memory of over half a lifetime
Like swiftly passing thunder dies away.
The century is no more under wardship:
High time to let the future have its say.

It is not revolutions and upheavals
That clear the road to new and better days,
But revelations, lavishness and torments
Of someone's soul, inspired and ablaze.

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We made no plans for Tuesday because we knew that Hurricane Isaias was coming, and indeed the storm had made landfall before I went to bed Monday night, but it largely spared our area -- the problems in Maryland were mostly south and east of us, including a couple of tornadoes and some bad flooding, and I have friends in New York and Connecticut who lost their power, but we only had hard rain here in the early morning hours that turned into late morning drizzle and then a partly cloudly, muggy afternoon.

So most of the news I ended up watching was about the tragedy in Beirut and the couple of primaries taking place Tuesday, plus the arguments about whether Black Widow, like Mulan, will debut streaming for $30 (I very much hope so, I don't want it to be delayed again and I also don't want to risk my health in a movie theater). We watched Stargirl while the Orioles were in a rain delay, then the Orioles while the Nationals were in a rain delay; the former lost, the latter won. After the storm: