{"id":1504,"date":"2007-11-28T23:01:57","date_gmt":"2007-11-29T04:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2007\/11\/28\/the-rain-stick\/"},"modified":"2007-11-28T23:01:57","modified_gmt":"2007-11-29T04:01:57","slug":"the-rain-stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/28\/the-rain-stick\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rain Stick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/findarticles.com\/p\/articles\/mi_m1058\/is_2_121\/ai_112905848\">Seamus Heaney<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Up-end the rain stick and what happens next<br \/>\n   Is a music that you never would have known<br \/>\n   To listen for. In a cactus stalk<\/p>\n<p>   Downpour, sluice-rash, spillage and backwash<br \/>\n   Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe<br \/>\n   Being played by water, you shake it again lightly<\/p>\n<p>   And diminuendo runs through all its scales<br \/>\n   Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes<br \/>\n   a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,<\/p>\n<p>   Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;<br \/>\n   Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.<br \/>\n   Up-end the stick again. What happens next<\/p>\n<p>   Is undiminished for having happened once,<br \/>\n   Twice, ten, a thousand time before.<br \/>\n   Who care if all the music that transpires<\/p>\n<p>   Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?<br \/>\n   You are like a rich man entering heaven<br \/>\n   Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For those wishing a more literal interpretation, here is what YouTube can teach you about the rain stick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Seamus Heaney. Up-end the rain stick and what happens next Is a music that you never would have known To listen for. In a cactus stalk Downpour, sluice-rash, spillage and backwash Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe Being played by water, you shake it again lightly And diminuendo runs through all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}