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.