Today is the First Day of Autumn, although it's a bit hard believing that here in Tucson where the temperatures are still in the high 90s and low 100s. But, just in case someone is reading this who lives where autumn has arrived, I thought I would post a few autumnal poems.
Now in sad autumn
As I take my darkening path . . .
A solitary bird
-- Basho --
Summer begins to have the look
Peruser of enchanting Book
Reluctantly but sure perceives
A gain upon the backward leaves--
Autumn begins to be inferred
By millinery of the cloud
Or deeper color in the shawl
That wraps the everlasting hill.
The eye begins its avarice
A meditation chastens speech
Some Dyer of a distant tree
Resumes his gaudy industry.
Conclusion is the course of All
At most to be perennial
And then elude stability
Recalls to immortality.
-- Emily Dickinson --
In Hardwood Groves
The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above,
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove
Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must go down into the dark decayed.
They must be pierced by flowers and put
Beneath the feet of dancing flowers.
However it is in some other world
I know that this is the way in ours.
-- Robert Frost --
The calling bell
Travels the curling mist-ways . . .
Autumn morning
-- Basho --
The haiku are from--
A Little Treasury of Haiku
Trans. Peter Beilenson
Avenel Books
No comments:
Post a Comment