Thursday, September 29, 2022

Poem: “Song at the Beginning of Autumn” by Elizabeth Jennings

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.

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