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| Autumn Leaves by John Everett Millais |
Autumn often teases out melancholy. Like the German poet Rilke, we sometimes imagine ourselves "restlessly wander[ing], while the leaves blow" or, like the Irish Yeats, begin to contemplate how our lives parallel the "woodland paths...dry."
Even Archibald MacLeish, one of my favorite Scottish American poets, dedicates sullen lines to autumn's killjoy presence:
I love that stubborn recognition of summer's mark--"sun smudge."
But before you categorize me as a complete curmudgeon, let me qualify my reluctance to celebrate autumn. (I know there are autumn-lovers contemplating an all-American tarring at this point.) It's not that I haven't welcomed autumn with open arms before.
In the past, my motives for loving autumn were not so worthy as you might imagine. When I said that I loved autumn, what I really meant was that I loved that autumn foretold Thanksgiving hunts and wood-burning fires in the fireplace. And really--let's all be frank--that's a rather immature appreciation. (It's a bit like declaring that you love mud because it means you get to wear your wellies.) Rather than being treated as a means to a more glorious end, autumn deserves to be appreciated on its own merits...and at a later date.
Far be it from me to tell the planet's axis and the American retail industry what to do, but why let those either factor hurry our final hours of summer revelry to an end? I propose a postponement of autumnal celebration. Yes, let's reschedule the unpacking of the sweaters and woolen socks. Let's remain aloof to the root vegetables and apple pies for a few days more.
How does October 1st look for you?
It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man's cry from autumn long since gone.
Wow. "Human season"--no label could be more damning. In "Winter Is Another Country," Archie spends an entire poem pleading with autumn to end:
I also love his description of autumn in "The Woman on the Stair."
If the fragrance, the odor of
Fallen apples, dust on the road,
...would end!
...I could endure...
If autumn ended and the cold light came.
I also love his description of autumn in "The Woman on the Stair."
Too cold too windy and too dark
The autumn dawn withholds the bees
And bold among the door-yard trees
The crow cries, the wild foxes bark.
But when I have to face the autumnal equinox each September, it is Archie's one-line "Autumn" that steals into my thoughts:
Sun smudge on the smoky water
I love that stubborn recognition of summer's mark--"sun smudge."
But before you categorize me as a complete curmudgeon, let me qualify my reluctance to celebrate autumn. (I know there are autumn-lovers contemplating an all-American tarring at this point.) It's not that I haven't welcomed autumn with open arms before.
In the past, my motives for loving autumn were not so worthy as you might imagine. When I said that I loved autumn, what I really meant was that I loved that autumn foretold Thanksgiving hunts and wood-burning fires in the fireplace. And really--let's all be frank--that's a rather immature appreciation. (It's a bit like declaring that you love mud because it means you get to wear your wellies.) Rather than being treated as a means to a more glorious end, autumn deserves to be appreciated on its own merits...and at a later date.
Far be it from me to tell the planet's axis and the American retail industry what to do, but why let those either factor hurry our final hours of summer revelry to an end? I propose a postponement of autumnal celebration. Yes, let's reschedule the unpacking of the sweaters and woolen socks. Let's remain aloof to the root vegetables and apple pies for a few days more.
How does October 1st look for you?
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