– 21 –

Autumn on the Plain

The music of the seasons moves to rallentando
Inscribed upon the centuries’ symphonic parchment,
As now the rapid-stepping retinue of summer
Gives way to grave-eyed March.

Slowly the late fruits swell, to be, unruddied,
Raped all untimely from reluctant branches
For merchants, were else, fulness-fated,
To earth-burial cast.

Now are the roadways newly scored and gritted
By the small feet of myriad ewes in transit,
Pawns in the game and play of man’s subsistence,
From grass to other grass.

Now Autumn calling from some northern territory
To northern trees in lassitude of ardours
Too long sustained, assures to them remission
From their shade-spinning task.

Leaf to spread leaf, in shudder of recognition,
Trembles; and as of dawn on nebulous darkness
One rosy-tufted cloud foretells the crimson,
So Autumn’s countermark,

Her golden seal upon one crest is branded
Among the verdurous boughs of those supplanters
Set on the southern plain by man’s disposal
And metamorphic art.

– 22 –

But the dim hosts entrenched among the gorges,
The aboriginal groves, undying green, make answer:
Autumn, pass on. No arbiter dismantles,
Nor may sun parch

Our rain-retaining thickets. Even as the mountains
From age to age in majesty and apartness,
Recording on their rock-entablatures returning seasons,
So stand we fast.

Stand fast, old forests; until man the migrant,
The meddler come; would mend, mars; his mastery
Fire-stolen, your charcoaled stumps will witness
Where he has passed.

Where he has passed the wintry vultures hover;
Deliberate death he wills, and where he passes
Waits death, deliberate. But to dissolution
All moves in general march.

The music of the seasons beats in soft suspension
to immemorial mode, till there is writ: finale
Upon the score. Then shall the furious trumpets
Sound their decisive blast.

But listen, now, to mutter of wind, nor’-wester
Nursing storms to come; it darkly arches
The evening sky, and rising, moans, and sighs away
To silence; oh, but hark

– 23 –

To Autumn calling: that we miss not blest diaphony
Of death and birth; dread not ever advancing
Resonance, of no veiled train funereal
But, on eternal path,

The superb trudge of the Creator’s almoners,
Life hid secure conveyed within their casket,
(As under carapace of that wind-fallen walnut
Thuds a muffled heart.)