who are you, little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high
window; at the gold
of november sunset
(and feeling: that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)
--e.e. cummings
And my own long-ago semi-haiku (there are pedantic arguments why 17 English syllables are much longer than 17 Japanese syllables, one being that by Japanese count November has 4 syllables, but I'll spare you them)
November sun.
My neighbour's garden
is back again
Yesterday back in TO amid the smell of dry fallen leaves and brilliant blue skies. 'Fall is the best time to do anything' someone said in a New York article long ago. Is true.
In November
De ramis cadunt folia, from branches
Leaves are falling; but as the year advances,
Language draws me backward through such leaves
As it accumulates, anthologies
Of Autumn feelings, Latin on Germanic:
Emily saw her summer lightly vanish,
Keats was companion to the languid reaper,
Cold was that time of year that came for Shakespeare.
De ramis cadunt folia, from branches
Leaves are falling; and so the year advances.
--Raymond Oliver
Referencing the 13th century poem
De ramis cadunt folia, Leaves fall from the branches
nam viror totus periit, all green strength perishes
iam calor liquit omnia now warmth leaves the world
et abiit; and flees from it
nam signa coeli ultima for into the last house in the heavens
sol petiit. the sun makes its way
(Amazing the amount of Latin I've forgotten...)
The body is like a November birch facing the full moon
And reaching into the cold heavens.
In these trees there is no ambition, no sodden body, no leaves,
Nothing but bare trunks climbing like cold fire!
My last walk in the trees has come. At dawn
I must return to the trapped fields,
To the obedient earth.
The trees shall be reaching all the winter.
It is a joy to walk in the bare woods.
The moonlight is not broken by the heavy leaves.
The leaves are down, and touching the soaked earth,
Giving off the odors that partridges love.
-Robert Bly, Solitude Late at Night in the Woods
Dunno if this is an autumn poem (picking chrysanthemums?) but I like it anyway:
Drinking Wine
I built my cottage among the habitations of men,
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses.
You ask: "Sir, how can this be done?"
"A heart that is distant creates its own solitude."
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern hedge,
Then gaze afar towards the southern hills.
The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds in flocks return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words.
--Tao Yuan Ming (Tao Chien)
Shall leave you with Emily Dickinson:
"November always seemed to me the Norway of the year."
Yup. Deep blue skies with the stars very near, and the energy that cold gives you.
