John Glenesk Mortimer

Rain in Summer

SOMMERREGEN This work was written for a concert in Köniz (Swiss canton of Bern), performed by Lorenz Hasler, founding member of the well-known salon music group I Salonisti, together with his wife Sabine and friends. The poem begins by simply describing how welcome the rain is in hot summer weather. It cools the fever of the sick, waters the fields and brings the parched landscape back to life. But then the poet reflects on the eternal cycle of water - how it evaporates in the sun and finally falls again as rain. He compares this to the endless cycle of life, hinting at an idea of reincarnation without stating it directly. "...the eternal cycle of strange, mysterious transformation From birth to death, from death to birth, From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth; Until to his wondering gaze more sublime images reveal themselves, Never seen before, The universe as an immeasurable wheel, Turning forever in the torrential stream of time."