SPRING SILENCE : AUTUMN SPEECH

Every year an autumn occurs
Between the spring and summer.
The June skies revert to March
And grey and heavy clouds climb back
On days that darken like late October
Bringing brief intervals of rain.
Out of winter the wind returns,
The wind that spring forgot
Reveals the pale velvet bellies
Of spring’s new-born leaves,
But cannot break them, cannot
Make them the lost leaves of autumn.
Through the grey and laden light
Out the same wind reaches
And tears out the blossom petals
That shone pink upon the cherry tree,
Or stood white on the tall acacia.
So fall spring’s autumn leaves
Broken by this winter wind
And are sprinkled on a summer lawn
That feels the touch of autumn tears.
Here, in this disrupted garden
The spring season fails
And all that then was felt,
On the wind and in the leaves,
Is blown across the present
Chills persistent hope,
And strips the season of successful speech.

But these autumn leaves cannot
Be swept, cannot be gathered,
Shrivel and decay as the spring season
Presses past this autumn day.
Here are thoughts for which no hand
Can find the reason or the fire,
Through which no flames flash
And find a unity in ash
But the violent growth of spring
Threatens every dying thing.

So June’s autumn leaves
Are blown under, blown back
For the year yet proceeds
Through the summer and the weeds
Until true autumn’s fruit
Drops to a winter earth
And the dark months learn
The earlier harvest’s dearth.

Shall pass the brightest the best months of the year
Before we meet again. Between autumn and autumn,
Between one season’s youth and the same season’s age,
Between spring-sudden and winter’s enduring darkness
Shall pass the heavily scented months of summer;
Months of inaction, or of actions whose urgency,
Once driven by the cold solstitial wind, are dissolved
By the spreading warmth, welcomed but not understood,
Returning not from any place ever known,
Not remembered as a meaningful, usable memory
But never quite forgotten. And during these months,
The best months, when the days are warm and the wind has gone,
We move silently between the sudden feeling of age
And age; between the horror of the perceived reality
And the mere need to keep warm. Having striven,
Then, to bring to birth, to foresee and forestall, all
That the darkening autumn will never dare to see,
Autumn shall turn to winter, a dark season
Growing darker. I have seen the unripened apple fall,
Broken by the blind wind, the small uneatable apple,
The hard and bitter fruit, not yet fruit, our fruit,
Never to be fruit, the unreasoned unseasoned seed
That fell before the season’s need. When we meet again,
In autumn, this spring silence shall be our autumn speech.