September (from 'The Months') - Linda Pastan

Their summer romance
over, the lovers
still cling
to each other

the way the green
leaves cling
to their trees
in the strange heat

of September, as if
this time
there will be
no autumn.









I've taken this poem directly from my colleague in poetry blogging, and her excellent blog to which I highly recommend subscribing.  I thank her for showing me this wonderful poem and apologize for so blatantly copying her idea in posting it!

Summer itself in this poem is like a summer lover.  There's a "strange heat" and a reluctance to separate.  The poem feels especially appropriate today, a hot September day.  It was nearly 95 F today (35 F for my non-American friends) and still, the leaves are mostly full and green, as if no one has told them summer is coming to a close soon.

My favorite line is the hope you can feel in the last stanza.  The leaves hold on "as if this time there will be no autumn" and they will not have to part.  Anyone who has ever had a summer romance, or any other sort of relationship limited by external time factors will feel those lines deeply.  That desperate cling, knowing you must separate, is sweet and painful all at the same time.  What a marvelous comparison.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; by they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be bay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.










Imagination, memory, day-dream, and solitary walks.  Wordsworth hits at the heart of poetry here.  It is the joyful impulse of creation, of motion and beauty so wonderful that it never really goes away.  Wordsworth's lonely wandering was hardly sad, for what cloud (he wandered "as a cloud" after all) is sad?  Clouds are lofty, majestic, changing constantly.  He blew onto this marvelous scene of daffodils ringing the coastline, dancing in the wind, outdoing even the sea itself for motion and joy.  He couldn't help but be jovial in such company as that.

The real gift though, is the memory of it.  The lovely image that comes to him in his daydreams, that perfect remembrance, more perfect than any reality.  It is the "inward eye which is the bliss of solitude."  That must be the single best way to describe a daydream, the inward eye which is the bliss of solitude.  Upon reading the poem, I leaned back in my chair, and let my mind wander to moments and images which now on recollection feel as magical to me as Wordsworth's daffodils.  The poem is at once personal, descriptive, and immediately applicable to anyone.  Who among us doesn't take joy in their sweetest remembered daydreams?  Those beautiful places our minds go are the reason one who is alone needn't be lonely.

The Season of Phantasmal Peace - Derek Walcott

Then all the nations of birds lifted together
the huge net of the shadows of this earth
in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
stitching and crossing it. They lifted up
the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes,
the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets,
the shadow of a frail plant on a city sill-
the net rising soundless at night, the birds' cries soundless, until
there was no longer dusk, or season, decline, or weather,
only this passage of phantasmal light
that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever.

And men could not see, looking up, what the wild geese drew,
what the ospreys trailed behind them in silvery ropes
that flashed in the icy sunlight; they could not hear
battalions of starlings waging peaceful cries,
bearing the net higher, covering this world
like the vines of an orchard, or a mother drawing
the trembling gauze over the trembling eyes
of a child fluttering to sleep;
                                              it was the light
that you will see at evening on the side of a hill
in yellow October, and no one hearing knew
what change had brought into the raven's cawing,
the killdeer's screech, the ember-circling chough
such an immense, soundless, and high concern
for the fields and cities where the birds belong,
except it was their seasonal passing, Love,
made seasonless, or, from the high privilege of their birth,
something brighter than pity for the wingless ones
below them who shared dark holes in windows and in houses,
and higher they lifted the net with soundless voices
above all change, betrayals of falling suns,
and this season lasted one moment, like the pause
between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace,
but, for such as our earth is now, it lasted long.










What a magnificent thing this poem is.  The birds, ever lifting higher, get to experience a season of phantasmal peace and light that is undiminished by the passing of shadows.  This poem puts me in mind of those perfect moments, when the light is just so, and you feel as though you could inhabit that moment forever.  As Walcott says, "it was the light / that you will see at evening on the side of a hill / in yellow October."  I don't think I've ever heard a more concise or evocative way to describe a month as "yellow October" which to me, brings to mind the essential nature of autumn.

Just imagining how "the birds lifted together / the huge net of the shadows of this earth" is enthralling.  I have to imagine all the shadows disappearing for one brief moment, and must try to imagine, though I cannot fully, a moment with light, "phantasmal light that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever."  The light is the peace of nature, highlighted by its constant connection to the birds in this poem.  We, the people, are the ones who share "dark holes in windows and in houses."

There's a great sense of serenity about this poem, even though the moment it describes is incredibly brief.  It's a reminder that there is beauty in the world, though we may have to rethink where we find it and why.  It's inevitable that time moves on, but in these moments of "phantasmal light" and peace, we need to try to live on that fine line.  As Walcott puts it so sublimely, it is the "pause between dusk and darkness."  The briefest instant: may it last forever.

Nightfall - Linda Dyer

The wood begins to gather darkness,
stuffing it in holes
and spreading it in hollows,
tucking it among the tree roots,
piling it against the sapling's trunk.
At first the upper branches stay aloof
preferring not to watch
the hoarding going on below,
but darkness stacks on darkness
stacks on darkness, up and up,
until the glutton woodland
vanishes from sight,
itself consumed in blackest night.









I don't think I've ever heard a sunset described in quite as interesting a way as this before.  Rather than darkness being a result of the passing of the light, it is an active element, building up and up, swallowing the trees and absorbing them into the night.  It's a ground up, one layer of abstraction sort of sunset description, and I can picture it perfectly.  A treeline, becoming dark from the group up, until the last vestiges of light on the highest branches are swallowed too by the vertical growing darkness.

I found this enchanting poem in a volume of poetry I received as a gift, The Blueline Anthology.  The poems in that collection are all inspired by, in some way, the Adirondack region.  All through my life, my family would vacation for a week or two in Lake George in the Adirondacks, so the region holds a very special place in my heart.  I cannot read something like this without imagining the pristine blue waters glinting as the sun comes down over the lake.  Now, thanks to this poem, I have another image to add to my recollection: the darkness moving its way up the tree, as "darkness stacks on darkness stacks on darkness."

["Hope" is the thing with feathers] - Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.










Hope can never be wiped out, and no matter how extreme the circumstance, it "sings the tune without the words - and never stops at all."  It is the endless optimism that cannot be knocked down by even the fiercest Gale.  Best of all, it never asks a thing of you, just giving tirelessly.  That is the nature of Hope, that tiny bird inside your soul.  I think I would do well to memorize this one.

Bob - Alfred Corn

     For Mimi Khalvati

Why go? Partly because we had no reason
To, though, granted, Hastings's on the Channel-
Which meant salt air and, that day, winter sun.
A zigzag wing from station down to shingle

To take in the cold light and arrowy
Jeers shrilled by veering scavengers overhead,
Who flirted, razzed, then flapped and rowed away,
Our tentative footsteps fumbling pebbles, dead

Shellfish, kelp, plastic bits. A backtrack trek
To lunch should keep mild melancholy at
Bay, even if the loose-ends, fifties-flick
Ambience was was we'd come for. Or part of what.

Later, our huff-puff climb uphill for the ruins'
Majestic overviews, in guidebook blather.
One silver path across the waves to France,
And the long, incoming roar of faith from farther

East. (Or west: fanaticism's viral.
Numbing to think about the human cost.)
Sunset. Time to unwind a dawdling spiral
Down to the mall - where it dawns on us we're lost.

Suppose we ask this sporty adolescent.
"The station? Oh, no problem. Bang a right
Up there, then left, and on along the Crescent
About two minutes, and Bob's your uncle, mate."

You smiled, interpreted - but then you would,
Having yourself once been an "alien."
(The conditional of ironic likelihood
Is hackneyed. Stop me if I use it again.)

Transit to London as night falls. First star.
Abrupt flashes of interrupting light
Light up your eyes, your lips, your shimmering hair.
Friend. Nothing more. And Bob's your uncle, mate.










A rambling internal monologue of a date that isn't a "date," is probably the best way to describe this Alfred Corn poem.  There's an air of defeat about the whole thing, starting with the season, location, and finally the narrator himself.  A trip to the shore in winter can be lovely, but it's not exactly what one associates with romance.  Secondly, the trip described is to the ruins of Hastings castle, where the Normans won a decisive victory against the Anglo-Saxon rulers of the area.  Lastly, the narrator himself describes everything with a twinge of pathos, of things faded.

His descriptions are beautiful, but they never highlight the generative nature of anything.  When he describes shellfish, it's in fragments, detritus, "fumbling pebbles, dead shellfish, kelp, plastic bits."  He is a man who has defeated himself, from his descriptions.  Clearly not from the UK himself, as evidenced by the phrase, "Bob's your uncle" (often said at the end of simple instructions) sticking in his head, the narrator is displaced as he follows his female companion, who once was alien herself, but not has presumably assimilated into the idioms of every day life in a foreign place.  The last stanza of the poem is when he reveals his total admiration of her, but only to himself.  Her lips, eyes, and shimmering hair lit by the "interrupting light" reveal that to him, she is "Friend. Nothing more."  It's impossible not to feel his sense of defeat there.  Whether there was once something there or not, we can never really know.  As an internal monologue of frustrated love, I think this poem does a great job creating that atmosphere through its setting and tiny details.

Second Fig - Edna St. Vincent Millay

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!










What fun and beauty is there in a sure thing?  This theme was touched on in the context of love last week in the Yeats poem I posted.  Here, Edna St. Vincent Millay puts in in very simple and enticing terms.  Do you want an ugly house, or a shining palace?  Never mind the stability, the question is beauty, which can be a flighty, unstable thing indeed.  Beautifully, succinctly put.