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 field. 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.

Şair: Elizabeth Jenn