Autumn. Already I feel it coming
in the August winds,
in the September rains
torrential and crying
and a shiver crossed the earth
that now, naked and sad,
welcomes a lost sun.
Now that it passes and declines,
in this autumn that gravely walks
with nameless sluggishness,
the best time of our lives
that slowly bids farewell.
To venerate the simple days
Which lead the seasons by -
Needs but to remember
That from you or I,
They may take the trifle
Termed mortality!
To invest existence with a stately air -
Needs but to remember
That the Acorn there
Is the egg of forest
For the upper Air!
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power,---that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.
But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.
Her face was in a bed of hair,
Like flowers in a plot -
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves -
Who hears may be incredulous,
Who witnesses, believes
Cupid, mischievous, capricious boy!
You asked me to give you shelter for a few hours.
But how many days and nights you have remained!
And now you've become imperious as if you were the master of the house!
I have been ousted from my broad bed;
I sit now upon the earth, passing my nights in torment;
in your audacity, you stoke flame upon flame in the hearth,
burning up my store for winter and singing me on the arm.
You have hidden and displaced my belongings;
I search and it's as if I've gone blind or insane.
You make such blundering noise that I fear that my little soul
will flee, and in order to escape you, will move out of the hut entirely!
O me! O life! Of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean,
of the struggle ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! So sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?
[Answer] That you are here - that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
If I have given you delight
By aught that I have done,
Let me lie quiet in that night
Which shall be yours anon:
And for the little, little, span
The dead are borne in mind,
Seek not to question other than
The books I leave behind.
More day s' dispersed away
and return in the hearts of poets.
Across the fields of Poland, the flat of Kutno
with the hills of corpses burning
in clouds of steam, there are the cross
for quarantine of Israel,
the blood of waste, the torrid exanthema,
chains already dead poor has long
fulminates and were open on their hands,
Buchenwald there, the gentle forest of beech,
its furnaces cursed; Stalingrado there,
Minsk and the marshes and snow putrefactive.
Poets do not forget. Oh, the crowd of cowards,
the losers, of the mercy by forgiveness.
I saw fair Doris with Damoetas stand,
He took her gently by the hand.
They looked in one another's eyes.
Then looked around-- did parents watch this wooing?
And seeing no one nigh, quick, quick
Enough, they did as we are doing!