I watched someone on one of the CT-based TV stations last night, as part of the evening weather forecast, use the turn of phrase in outlining the next couple of days of weather 'and there will come soft rains.' And just by the way he said it, suave, smug and disconnected, I knew he had no idea where he had first heard the expression or what it could possibly mean.
As it turns out, it had meanings of which I had no awareness. Another 'Global Village' moment of world-wide convergence and connectivity. I found this Russian animation interpretation, (actually a Soviet interpretation from 1984) of Bradbury's short story--paralleling the original well enough that I can easily follow it, but diverging at critical points so that I wonder what the animator was attempting to add.
"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
if mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone."
If the Russians love their children, too.....
-bill kenny
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