Cabbages and Kings The Rain

EVENTUALLY we'll realize that the rain isn't going to stop. Saturday's good weather was a final taunt, merely a parody of Harvard football weather to remind us of a lost era. Someone will probably point out that this rain started after Nixon's speech, and that it rained quite a bit after his election, too. But, remembering the simian grimaces, the compulsive wiping of a sweaty upper lip, the glazed smile after fluffed lines, we'll realize that Richard Nixon just isn't in the rain-maker league. Then there will be the handful of optimists who start keeping count. waiting for the dove and the rainbow. But even they will finally learn to reject Biblical nostalgia, and accept the rain as part of life.

In fact it will be the constant in our lives-the taste of dampness like stale cigarette smoke in the morning, the dead leaves in the Common like soggy Wheaties underfoot, the chill that seeps under doors, permeating our clothes, our sheets, our skin. But the sound, most of all, will pervade existence; it will be the insistent insidious counterpoint to clammy kisses and perspiring embraces, to lectures and marches and meals, until we find ourselves praying for a cataclysm, an orgasmic deluge to end the monotonous drizzle.

Sooner or later, of course, the television weather-men will promise us a dry air mass from somewhere, and when we wake up the sun will apparently be shining. But we won't be fooled. We'll know it's still raining where it counts.