Joseph Wood Krutch: Some thoughts on autumn

Joseph Wood Krutch, prior to moving to Tucson, lived in New England,  and some of his finest writings about nature relate to that period. The excerpt below is from The Twelve Seasons.


     "One day the first prematurely senile leaf will quietly detach itself in a faint breeze and flutter silently to the ground. All through the summer an occasional unnoticed, unregretted leaf has fallen from time to time. But not as this one falls. There is something quietly ominous about the way in which it gives up the ghost, without a struggle, almost with an air of relief. Others will follow, faster, and faster. Soon the ground will be covered, though many of the stubborner trees are still clothed. Then one night a wind, a little harder than usual, and carrying perhaps the drops of a cold rain, will come. We shall awake in the morning to see that the show is over. The trees are naked; bare, ruined choirs, stark against the sky."  (See Shakespeare, Sonnet 73)


                                           --------------

(What follows is an expression of Krutch's attitude towards those who admire autumn. I must admit I'm one of those whom Krutch considers a bit perverse in my thinking.)


                                    
     "To me there always seems to be something perverse about those country dwellers who like the autumn best. Their hearts, I feel, are not in the right place. They must be among those who see Nature merely as a spectacle or a picture, not among those who share her own own moods. Spring is the time for exuberance, autumn for melancholy and regret. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness? Yes, of course, it is that too. But promise, not fulfillment, is what lifts the heart. Autumn is no less fulfillment than it is also the beginning of the inevitable end.

     No doubt the colors of autumn are as gorgeous in their own way as any of spring. Looked at merely as color, looked with the eye of that kind of painter to whom only color and design are important, I suppose they are beautiful and nothing more. But looked at as outward and visible signs, as an expression of what is going on in the world of living things, they produce another effect.

     'No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, as I have seen in one autumnal face'--so wrote John Donne in compliment to an old lady. But Donne was enamored of death. Send not to know for whom the leaf falls, it falls for thee."  (See John Donne, "Meditation 17:  Devotions upon Emergent Occasions")



What Krutch doesn't mention is that the appreciation of the fall colors is also frequently tinged with sadness or melancholy.  In addition, autumn is the harvest season, the culmination of the farmer's efforts for the past six or seven months.   I think autumn is the most complex of the seasons, joy at the colors and the fullness of the harvest and also sadness at the end of the cycle,  or at the inescapable sign of the end of the cycle. 

Autumn Poems

Today, September 22,  2016 is the first day of Autumn, or the Autumnal Equinox, or if you prefer, the Fall Equinox.  In recognition of this, here are a few poems about autumn. 



No. 12

The morns are meeker than they were --
The nuts are getting brown --
The berry's cheek is plumper --
The Rose is out of town.

The Maple wears a gayer scarf --
The field a scarlet gown --
Lest I should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson




With the moon-rising .. .
   Leaf after leaf after leaf
        Falls fluttering down
                     -- Shiki --
from Cherry-Blossoms: Japanese Haiku Series III
tran. not given





     The mountain grows darker,
Taking the scarlet
    From the autumn leaves.
                     -- Buson --
from Silent Flowers
trans R. H. Blyth



Clear autumn sky
   One pine tree
Soaring on the ridge.
               -- Soseki --
from Zen Haiku
Trans and edited by Soiku Shigematsu




Song at the Beginning of Autumn

Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells.  All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields.  Flowers flourish everywhere.

Proust who collected time within
A child's cake would understand
The ambiguity of this--
Summer still raging while a thin
column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.

But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia.  We give names--
Autumn and summer, winter, spring--
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing

But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marbles. smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke. 

-- Elizabeth Jennings --
from Collected Poems
  

 When I think of autumn, I do not think of autumn in Tucson, where I've lived for over 45 years.  Instead, I think of autumn in Chicago, where I grew up.

Kenko: longing for the past

29

"When I sit down in quiet meditation, the one emotion hardest to fight against is a longing in all things for the past.  After the others have gone to bed, I pass the  time on a long autumn's night by putting in order whatever belongings are at hand.  As I tear up scraps of old correspondence I should prefer not to leave behind, I sometimes find among them samples of the calligraphy of a friend who has died, or pictures he drew for his own amusement, and I feel exactly as I did at the time   Even with letters written by friends who are still alive I try, when it has been long since we met, to remember the circumstances, the year.  What a moving experience that is!  It is sad to think that a man's familiar possessions, indifferent to his death, should remain unaltered long after he is gone."

-- Kenko --
from Essays in Idleness


This is a common theme in Kenko's collection of essays.  In one essay, he writes that in all things those of the past are superior to the present.    I guess as one gets older one only remembers the good things.  Someone, I forget who, once wrote that perfect happiness was good health and a bad memory. 

I wonder if those "familiar possessions" are really unaltered.  I wonder if they may be changed in some way by the person who uses them or even just contemplates them.

More Autumn Haiku

The storm has moved on and the sun is now shining on Tucson. 


       Pebbles shining clear,
And clear six silent fish .  .  .
        Deep autumn water
                      --  Buson --



                                                  You turn and suddenly
                                        There in purpling autumn sky .  .  . 
                                                       White Fujiami!
                                                                 -- Onitsura --



     All the field hands
enjoy a noontime nap after
       the harvest moon
               -- Basho --



                                         The mountain grows darker,
                                      Taking the scarlet
                                            From the autumn leaves.
                                                              -- Buson --



  Entering autumn.
The painting of flowering plants
  A daily task.
                         -- Shiki --





Haiku 1 and 2
A Little Treasury of Haiku
trans. by Peter Beilenson


Haiku 3
The Sound of Water
trans. by Sam Hamill


Haiku 4
Silent Flowers
trans. by R. H. Blyth


Haiku 5
Haiku: a Hallmark Edition
trans. by R. H. Blyth

Some autumn haiku

The first winter storm has settled down over Tucson for the past two days--temperatures in the low 50s--grey, gloomy overcast skies--rain, rain, rain.  .  .

Perhaps that explains the temper of these haiku.



         Deepen, drop, and die
Many-hued chrysanthemums .  .  .
         One black earth for all
                    -- Ryusui --




                                           Chilling autumn rain .  .  .
                                    The moon, too bright for showers,
                                              Slips from their fingers
                                                          -- Tokuku --



                                                                                  
      Rainy-month, dripping
On and on as I lie abed .  .  .
          Ah, old man's memories!
                             -- Buson --





                                         Gray moor, unmarred
                                By any path .  .  . a single branch .  .  .
                                         A bird .  .  . November
                                                           -- Anon --




                On one riverbank
Sunbeams slanting down .  .  . but on
         The other .  .  . raindrops
                                  -- Buson --



When the sun comes out again, if ever, I'll post more cheerful haiku.




All haiku come from
A Little Treasury of Haiku
Avenel Books,  NY
translated by Peter Beilenson

Loren Eiseley: Some short poems and a haiku by Roka

Footnote to Autumn

Old boulders in the autumn sun and wind,
Settling a little, leaning toward the light
As if to store its summer--these remain
The earth's last gesture in the falling night.

This then is age: It is to have been worked
By the forces of frost and the unloosing sun,
It is to bear such markings fine and proud
As speak of weathers that are long since done.



The second stanza:  could that refer to people?  I have seen photographs of people whose faces seem to tell the stories of their lives.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Night Snow


Nothing
Is lovelier
Than snowflakes at midnight
Drifting out of the dark above the
Streetlamps.
-- Loren Eiseley --


I can remember winter nights in Chicago, looking out the window at the snow coming down in the light of the streetlight in front of our house. 

- - - - - - - - - - -

Old Wharf at Midnight

Under
All decay sounds
The restless monotone
Of the sea at midnight creeping beneath
Old piers.


- - - - - - - - - - -

The Dark Reader

Old moons
these nights and years,
and moss on broken stones . . .
Who stoops by glow-worm lamps to read
your name?


-- Loren Eiseley --
from The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiseley

- - - - - - - - - - -

     Winter rain deepens
Lichened letters on the grave . . .
     And my old sadness
                 -- Roka --
from A Little Treasury of Haiku

Thomas Hardy: "At Day-Close in November"

Here's a poem by Thomas Hardy that I just discovered by accident. I opened up the book, The Works of Thomas Hardy, to the middle, approximately, and found this aptly named poem.



At Day-Close in November

The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird wings across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon time,
Float past like specks in the eye;
I set every tree in my June time,
And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall tress grew here,
That none will in time be seen.


A simple little poem with some lines that I like: "Beech leaves, that yellow the noon time." I didn''t realize that "yellow" is a verb, as well as a noun. It's an apt use of it here. I also like "in my June time." Perhaps it's the ambiguity here. Did he mean he set the tree during June or during the June time of his own life? Or both?

And, of course, the last stanza where Hardy comments on the shortness of memory and also the inevitable transience of all creation. Those trees, which for the children have always been there, will be gone some day, something equally unthinkable for those children, and for us too. How much of what we see about us has "always been there" and will "always be there"?

I guess maybe this poem isn't quite that simple after all.

William Shakespeare: Sonnet LXXIII

One of my favorite sonnets by Shakespeare


Sonnet LXXIII

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
      This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
      To love that well which thou must leave ere long.


The images in this sonnet are simple and striking and apt: autumn, twilight, and the dying embers of a fire to symbolize one's later years. I realize others may differ, but I consider the first four lines-- autumn--to be among the best, if not the very best, in Shakespeare's sonnets.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold,

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

What are your favorite lines from Shakespeare?

Loren Eiseley: We Are The Scriveners

We Are The Scriveners

I have not seen her in forty years.
She is old now, or lies in one of those midwestern
farm cemeteries where
no one remembers for long, because everyone
leaves for the cities. She was young, with freckles
and a wide generous mouth, a good girl to have
loved for a lifetime but the world
always chooses otherwise, or we ourselves
in blindness. I would not remember so clearly save that here
by a prairie slough sprinkled with the leaves of autumn
the drying mud on the shore shows the imprint
of southbound birds. I am too old to travel,
but I suddenly realize how a man in Sumer
half the world and millennia away
saw the same imprint and thought
there is a way of saying upon clay, fire-hardened,
there is a way of saying
"loneliness"
a way of saying
"where are you?" across the centuries
a way of saying
"forgive me"
a way of saying
"We were young. I remember, and this, this clay
imprinted with the feet of birds
will reach you somewhere
somehow
if it take eternity to answer."
There were men
like this in Sumer, or who wept among the
autumn papyrus leaves in Egypt.
We are the scriveners who with pain
outlasted our bodies.

-- Loren Eiseley --
from Another Kind of Autumn

Writing is a way of talking with someone, not only separated by distance, but also by time. Sometimes there's no way of answering; the best one can do is listen and pass on the message to someone who has yet to come. The spirit of the poem reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Walt Whitman--"A noiseless patient spider," the last stanza of which follows. You can read the complete poem if you scroll down to the bottom.


And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.


I think Eiseley and Whitman would understand each other.

Serendipity: more autumn poetry from China

Listening to a Monk From Shu Playing the Lute
The monk from Shu with his green lute-case walked
Westward down Emei Shan, and at the sound
Of the first notes he strummed for me I heard
A thousand valleys' rustling pines resound.
My heart was cleansed, as if in flowing water.
In bells of frost I heard the resonance die.
Dusk came unnoticed over the emerald hills
And autumn clouds layered the darkening sky.

-- Li Po --
(701--762)
trans. by Vikram Seth



A lute seems the perfect instrument to capture the flavor of autumn. The only other instrument, I think, would be the flute--well--maybe a cello. That would make an interesting trio--a lute, a cello, and a flute. I wonder if there are any works composed for this trio.





from Autumn Thoughts

Leaves fall turning turning to the ground,
by the front eaves racing, following the wind;
murmuring voices seem to speak to me
as they whirl and toss in headlong flight.
An empty hall in the yellow dusk of evening:
I sit here silent, unspeaking.
The young boy comes in from outdoors,
trims the lamp, sets it before me,
asks me questions I do not answer,
brings me a supper I do not eat.
He goes and sits down by the west wall,
reading me poetry--three or four poems;
the poet is not a man of today--
already a thousand years divide us--
but something in his words strikes my heart,
fills it again with an acid grief.
I turn and call to the boy:
Put down the book and go to bed now--
a man has times when he must think,
and work to do that never ends.

-- Han Yu --
(768--824)
trans. by Burton Watson


One can't always live in the past; today is always interrupting, isn't it.





Both poems are taken from
World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our TimeKatherine Washburn and John S. Major, editors

Fall Equinox

Like last year, the first day of autumn, or the Fall Equinox, doesn't seem much like fall here in Tucson, where the temperature is expected to hit 100. But, the Sun and the Stars have decreed that today is the day, so here's a few poems that may be closer to reality in a month or so.

For you in northern climes, therefore:



Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the fragrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
with a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

-- Carl Sandburg --


(Autumn--the season of memories . . .)




Yellow autumn moon . . .
Unimpressed the scarecrow stands
Simply looking bored

-- Issa --
from A Little Treasury of Haiku






Autumn Refrain

The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of the sun, too, gone . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never--shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness that comes to me out of this, beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never--shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.

--Wallace Stevens --


(I find this the most puzzling of the autumn poems.)




#656

The name - of it - is "Autumn" -
The hue - of it - is Blood -
An Artery - upon the Hill -
A Vein - along the Road -

Great Globules - in the Alleys -
And Oh, the Shower of Stain -
When winds - upset the Basin -
And spill the Scarlet Rain -

It sprinkles Bonnets - far slow -
It gathers ruddy Pools -
Then - eddies like a Rose - away -
Upon Vermilion Wheels -

-- Emily Dickinson --
from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
ed. Thomas H. Johnson


Autumn Note

The little flowers of yesterday
Have all forgotten May.
The last gold leaf
Has turned to brown.
The last bright day is grey.
The cold of winter comes apace
And you have gone away.

-- Langston Hughes --





Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

-- Robert Frost --


(That last line raises some questions, doesn't it? Frost has a habit of doing that. Does the poem end on an ominous note?)




Dry cheerful cricket
Chirping, keeps the autumn gay . . .
Contemptuous of frost

-- Basho --
from A Little Treasury of Haiku
(This poem also seems to end on an ominous note.)

(Just noticed the double tie-ins with the previous poem.)

Fall Equinox

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