Quotation from the TMBG FAQ, maintained by John Relph <relph@engr.sgi.com>.

9. What does the Morse code spell in "The Pencil Rain"?

Ben Nicholson <NICHOLBP@rosevc.rose-hulman.edu> writes:

Anyway, my girlfriend got all the letters, but she couldn't make out what it said. She then read me the sequence and I recognized it from my high school Spanish class. The message:

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay, canta y no llores

It is a Spanish folk song. Translated, the first line means "Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay, sing and don't cry."

Dave Zobel <dz@mohawk.desktalk.com> adds that the song is "'Cielito Lindo,' which some folks may recognize as the song once sung by the Frito Bandito."

Sadiye Guler <guler@chekov.ecs.umass.edu> adds:

"Cielito Lindo" translates to "Pretty Little Sky"

and i say, there we go!

• the spanish song is saying "don't cry pretty little sky"
• our song is "pencil rain", and the rain is how skies cry, right? i mean as a commonly used metaphor
• so, the bullet/pencil rain is the sky's tears, and the morse code says "sing and don't cry" to the sky.

i take it as an antiwar message, ironically morse-coded by gun shot noises.

HEY!!! <PROCHNPD@cnsvax.uwec.edu> responds:

Gunshots? sorry to bring it up again but it sounds NOTHING like gunshots...

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Quoth Bob Nisonger <bobn@mail.digital-collections.com>:

The second line of Pencil Rain is a quote from Wallace Steven's "The Emperor of Ice Cream," which figured prominently in Stephen King's book, "The Shining."

Quoth Matthew Kurz <kurzm@u.arizona.edu>:

Some friends of mine and I have long contended that pencil rain could be a exaggerated ode to the childhood game of pencil war in which you take turns trying to break each other's pencil with your own pencil. The main reason we had interpreted pencil rain as alluding to that game were the lines "the infantry stands / and holds out its hands"-- one kid holds out his hands grasping each end of his pencil for the other kid to take a whack at it.

Quoth John Wilson <JWilson@Moe.Webstersite.com>:

The possible dream
Finale of seem
The moment that some call eternal that some call insane
Now helmets on each head awaiting the first lead
The pageant is named the pencil rain

Basicly, this part of the song is about troops waiting in the trenches of WWI, Possible Dream referring to the "This can't be happening" mind set of a soldier, and a battle can seem to last forever and mad.

The infantry stands
And holds out its hands
The marshal's binoculars focus and skyward they train
They're searching the yonder blue
They look out for number two
The heraldry of the pencil rain

Soldiers stand there holding out their hands as if to say "why?" while an officer searches the sky for planes looking out for #2 (his troops) and watching for: Pencil Rain = Flechettes. Flechettes are small metal spikes that planes dropped in trenches during WWI, and they would just fall and could go through the body of a horse (pleasent, eh?) So the officer is watching for any aircraft that might be dropping a rain of pencil shaped spikes on his men.

And now hear the roar that none can ignore
The thunderous clatter of splintering wood and lives that are claimed
And none who have witnessed all
Can think of a nobler cause than perishing in the pencil rain

Hey, a plane has come along and is raining on them, the spikes are raining down on the troops claiming lives and splintering the wooden supports in the trench. The last 2 lines are sarcasticly saying "What a manly contest war is to die in a hail of spikes." Basicly saying this sucks and so does war. Or something.

Quoth Dave Madden <dcmst25@pop.pitt.edu>:

once upon a time there was this distant land where instead of raining water it would rain No. 2 pencils! imagine that...now these pencils were sharpened when they fell, and they could hurt you if you got hit by one cause they fell really fast. So when the pencil rain would happen (it wasnt too frequent an event), the infantry of the land would hold out its hands to see if there was anything falling. If they felt pencils, they would put on thir helmets and protect the people from the falling pencils.

and then the rains would come! the thunderous clatter of splintering wood would be heard all around the land, and people would run for their lives into some sort of shelter But sadly some people didnt make it and their lives would be claimed by the torrential storm of lead.

And everyone in the land knows that if you die by the pencil rain, it is a very noble death. For as much as the people of the land feared the pencil rain they respected it as something that needed to be. Death by pencil was the noblest death indeed!

Quoth Kevin Baxter <yelowsub@mariner.rutgers.edu>:

I ran across the line "Finale of seem" in a poem entitled The Emperor of Ice-Cream, by damned-if-I-can-remember right now. But, the poet is a famous modern poet. Check Norton's Anthology or something.

Quoth Torey Lightcap <lightcap@waterwiser.org>:

This song is definitely about war--and, not suprisingly, the main allusion to war is the very title.

If you've seen WWII footage shot at ground level of bombs falling out of planes, you know that the bombs generally appear long, skinny, and pointed at one end--looking just like pencils in silhouette. When hundreds of bombs are shown falling from several planes at once, the visual effect is a kind of "rain."

This is why the marshal's binoculars train skyward, and it's also why the tune is quite good. Read this way, as a concentration solely on the last anxious moments of someone's life before being bombed, the song assumes tragic proportions.

Quoth <Jacktrip@aol.com>:

I see it as as song about bored people who for no reason start dropping pencils on those little green army men. the song is then from the little soldiers point of view.

Giantisms:

• The opening words pun on the song "The Impossible Dream" from "The Man of La Mancha."
• They look out for number two...pencils?