Thursday, September 15, 2005
Autumn
Sometime last week, summer ended. And I didn't notice. Maybe it's because I had a cold and couldn't smell that change in the air. But summer's gone and it feels and smells like fall now. ("Fall" sounds so prosaic and American. But I feel pretentious saying "autumn.") I put an extra quilt on my bed over the weekend, and I've started breaking out the sweaters. I love the cool weather.
This quote was on my poetry calendar today:
On Writing "End of Summer"
"I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem. It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings."
--Stanley Kunitz
This quote was on my poetry calendar today:
On Writing "End of Summer"
"I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem. It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings."
--Stanley Kunitz
End of Summer
Stanley Kunitz
An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
the roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
that part of my life was over.
Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their population forth,
And a cruel wind blows.
| posted by Barbara | 7:42 PM