I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe, Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark. My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave. Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land. A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea, A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping An aging whiskey of distances and departures. We wait for a winter lion, Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves. The birds have flown their summer skies to the south, And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass Which the bumble bee has abandoned. Already the iron door of the north Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows Order their populations forth, And a cruel wind blows. 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. 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. Southern LivingĪn agitation of the air, A perturbation of the light Admonished me the unloved year Would turn on its hinge that night. Sara TeasdaleĪn agitation of the air, A perturbation of the light Admonished me the unloved year Would turn on its hinge that night. Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to, Lest they forget them. Let me remember you, voices of little insects, Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters, Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, Snow-hushed and heavy. The grasshopper's horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer. Lyric night of the lingering Indian summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer. That's autumn heat: her hand placing silver buckles with silver, gold buckles with gold, setting each on the hook it belongs on in a closet soon to be empty, and calling it pleasure. Before he goes she straightens his belts in the closet, rearranges the socks and sweaters inside the dresser by color. A man with cancer leaves his wife for his lover. One is a dock you walk out on, the other the spine of a thin swimming horse and the river each day a full measure colder. One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider. The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer.
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