Falling Leaves and Early Snow

David Grossmann

Falling Leaves and Early Snow



 In the years to come they will say,
“They fell like the leaves
In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”
November has come to the forest,
To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.
The year fades with the white frost
On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,
Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.
Ice forms in the shadows;
Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.


In the afternoon thin blades of cloud
Move over the mountains;
The storm clouds follow them;
Fine rain falls without wind.
The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.
When the rain pauses the clouds
Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.
In the evening the wind changes;
Snow falls in the sunset.
We stand in the snowy twilight
And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.
Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,
Glimmering with floating snow.
An owl cries in the sifting darkness.
The moon has a sheen like a glacier.



Kenneth Rexroth
from The Collected Shorter Poems



"The year fades with the white frost."
"Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream."
"Thin blades of cloud."
"We stand in the snowy twilight."

And then!
"An owl cries in the sifting darkness."


An owl cries in the sifting darkness? This is an accuracy of speech so exquisite I want to rave, make an idiot of myself, rant about poetry as an unparalleled instrument of clarity.
If snow is falling, it's like icing sugar being sifted. And it appears as if the darkness is being sifted. That's more than poetry, it's true. And what is falling? The snow or the darkness?

I love this poem. (I try not to say stupid things like that, but I'm stupid!) Every line is an image I know, that I recall from somewhere - an actual experience, a movie scene, a painting? Is there a collective soul? Is there a place where all beautiful memories and images converge? Where you and I remember the same moment, even though we have never met, and live half a world away? Is it possible? I need to think about this.

November Night

Kelly Sereda

November Night

Listen. .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

Adelaide Crapsey

What could I possibly add to that?

In November

"Goldfinch", Robert Bateman

In November

With loitering step and quiet eye,

Beneath the low November sky,

I wandered in the woods, and found

A clearing, where the broken ground

Was scattered with black stumps and briers,

And the old wreck of forest fires.

 It was a bleak and sandy spot,

And, all about, the vacant plot

Was peopled and inhabited

By scores of mulleins long since dead.

A silent and forsaken brood

n that mute opening of the wood,

So shrivelled and so thin they were,

So gray, so haggard, and austere,

Not plants at all they seemed to me,

But rather some spare company

Of hermit folk, who long ago,

Wandering in bodies to and fro,

Had chanced upon this lonely way,

And rested thus, till death one day

Surprised them at their compline prayer,

And left them standing lifeless there.

There was no sound about the wood

Save the wind's secret stir. I stood

Among the mullein-stalks as still

As if myself had grown to be

One of their sombre company,

A body without wish or will.

And as I stood, quite suddenly,

Down from a furrow in the sky

The sun shone out a little space

Across that silent sober place,

Over the sand heaps and brown sod,

The mulleins and dead goldenrod,

And passed beyond the thickets gray,

And lit the fallen leaves that lay,

Level and deep within the wood,

A rustling yellow multitude.

And all around me the thin light,

So sere, so melancholy bright,

Fell like the half-reflected gleam

Or shadow of some former dream;

A moment's golden revery

Poured out on every plant and tree

A semblance of weird joy, or less,

A sort of spectral happiness;

And I, too, standing idly there,

With muffled hands in the chill air,

Felt the warm glow about my feet,

And shuddering betwixt cold and heat,

Drew my thoughts closer, like a cloak,

While something in my blood awoke,

A nameless and unnatural cheer,

A pleasure secret and austere.

Archibald Lampman

“Weird joy”, “Spectral happiness.” “A nameless and unnatural cheer.” Really now. Unnatural cheer! Explain that! “Melancholy bright.” I wish I could have met Mr. Lampman. I know I would have liked him. He speaks my language. Can you find the goldfinch in the painting?

Poetry Searches For Radiance

unknown

Poetry Searches for Radiance

Poetry searches for radiance,
poetry is the kingly road
that leads us farthest.
We seek radiance in a gray hour,
at noon or in the chimneys of the dawn,
even on a bus, in November,
while an old priest nods beside us.

The waiter in a Chinese restaurant bursts into tears
and no one can think why.
Who knows, this may also be a quest,
like that moment at the seashore,
when a predatory ship appeared on the horizon
and stopped short, held still for a long while.
And also moments of deep joy

and countless moments of anxiety.
Let me see, I ask.
Let me persist, I say.
A cold rain falls at night.
In the streets and avenues of my city
quiet darkness is hard at work.
Poetry searches for radiance.

Adam Zagajewski

"We seek radiance in a gray hour." I know that to be true. And underneath it lies this hope - "Let me see, I ask. Let me persist, I say." I love that. Maybe that's what the poet is doing, doggedly working toward hope, toward light, in spite of everything working against him.