A speaker walks alone through city streets on a rainy afternoon. The sound his shoes make on the wet asphalt sounds to his ears like a funeral symphony, and his own walking like a dead march. From the start, the mood is heavy with grief. Looking toward a mountain, he notices that a white cloud that had been kissing it in the morning is gone. At once he interprets the rain as the mountain’s tears for the dead cloud. The landscape becomes a funeral: the mountain mourns, the speaker mourns with it. By the end he is so absorbed in this imagined loss that he no longer feels the wetness on his shoulders and feet. The outer weather and the inner mood merge completely, turning a lonely walk into an act of shared mourning with the natural world.
Mourning — Summary
On this rainy afternoon while I walk alone the streets the music that my shoes make on the wet asphalt sounds to my ears like a funeral symphony and my walk like a dead march.
Casually raising my eyes to the mountain in front me I notice that the white cloud which in the morning was kissing the mountain is there no more.
So, I say to myself; ‘these wet drops falling are not the rain drops, they are tears of the mountain for the death of that white cloud’.
Mourning for this death I continue my walk not feeling the wetness on my shoulders and my feet.