Umbrella (November)

The umbrella is like some poem in another language, a device seemingly inessential to its meaning. It’s teeming across daybreak Melbourne, suburbs of grey rain linked by orange street-lights. Then at line seven the click of the diamond button. The canopy flowers. Or perhaps spreads like a leafing November tree. Or sets into the air like a dome. The verb infers all these possibilities. What the person feels comes late, relationships sorely tested, failure of anyone properly to understand. And thinks: stoicism is all very well but rain is lovely under here. The word for lovely (line nineteen) is untranslatable.