On [:] The sheer weight of a raindrop | Vladimir Nabokov, 1951

Hiroshi Awatsuji , Sou, 1988

“Without any wind blowing, the sheer weight of a raindrop, shining
in parasitic luxury on a cordate leaf, caused its tip to dip, and what
looked like a globule of quicksilver performed a sudden glissando
down the centre vein, and then, having shed its bright load, the
relieved leaf unbent. Tip, leaf, dip, relief – the instant it all took to
happen seemed to me not so much a fraction of time as a fissure
in it, a missed heartbeat, which was refunded at once by a patter
of rhymes: I say ‘patter’ intentionally, for when a gust of wind
did come, the trees would briskly start to drip all together in as
crude an imitation of the recent downpour as the stanza I was
already muttering resembled the shock of wonder I had
experienced when for a moment heart and leaf had been one.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: A Memoir, 1951- 67

Will Cook, Cordate leaves, 2008