I
Finally one should refuse to use
Words denoting elemental phenomena,
Especially when depicting
Human spiritual experiences and frames of mind.
Poetry in the present and future tenses must be constructed otherwise.

II
I watch through the window.
The rain rains in poems sung for the thousandth time,
The snow snows in poems sung for the thousandth time.
I go outside.
There’s nothing poetic about the wind.
It just makes my trousers flap,
Strikes my face and confuses my thoughts,
Which pretty well confirms
My theoretical deliberations:
Poetry and meteorology
Have over time come to quarrel with each other,
And now’s the time for them
Each to mind their own business.

III
My grandmother (on my father’s side), Mariam Iatashvili,
Was a meteorologist.
My grandfather (on my mother’s side), Parmen Rurua,
Was a poet.
Since childhood the things that sounded most poetic to me
Were the names of various types of cloud.
My grandmother would point to the sky and teach me,
‘Cumulus, stratocumulus.’
But a lot of time passed after that.
And today I,
However regrettable and odd it may be,
Am coming out with an exposé
Of the unpoetic nature of meteorology
And the unmeteorological nature of poetry.

IV
I expect you realise,
This is no easy subject.
All the more so if you’ve written lines, like:
‘The wind is in the soul, o watery-eyed Maria,
The wind is in the soul, whether it’s dark or day-long light…’
And quite a few similar other things.
Yes this is no easy subject.
But I am nevertheless doing this
So that in future life and poetry
There should be no rain falling from my eyes,
No snow falling on my hair,
No wind lurking in my soul.

V
I wrote this poem
As a weather forecast for poetry
And I walked out into the street,
Where an unpoetic wind
Flapped my trousers and
Hit my face.