Autumn Lament
September’s sun has come and gone
And now the fall is here.
October’s blaze adorns the lawn,
The swan song of the year.
The bonfires of my autumns past
Burn cool as I recall
The hayride loves that failed to last
Beyond the end of fall.
Out on the gridiron battlefield,
Where so much toil was paid,
Where cheers and chants once loudly pealed,
Now flags and glory fade.
Our friends and kinsmen now are few.
Our lovers are all gone.
All those we thought would see us through
Cannot be counted on.
When we were young we loved the fall.
We loved the leaves aglow.
Knew always we’d have one more fall.
Those days, what did we know?
(2018)
NOTES: Something about autumn makes me want to return to the poems of British poet A.E. Housman.
Housman once said in a lecture that the special function of poetry was “to transfuse emotion–not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader’s sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer.”
There is something in so many of his poems that vibrates on the same wavelength with the sense of loss I feel when fall arrives. So when the nights began to cool and the leaves began to turn, I picked up my old copy of A Shropshire Lad and relished Housman’s lean, direct, and delicious verse once again.
One of the forms he used was a type of ballad that alternates lines of 8 syllables with lines of 6 syllables. It’s the form Housman used in one of my favorites, Number XXXVI in Shropshire, a poem that opens:
White in the moon the long road lies,
The moon stands blank above;
White in the moon the long road lies,
That leads me from my love.
It’s a seemingly simple form, but ideal for conveying emotion in a concise, concentrated way. It’s tricky because the lines are so short. There is no room for filler or fluff. I had tried my hand at it before, but neglected it recently.
So, with my emotion fortified by Housman’s verse, and my memory refreshed regarding a potent poetic form, I sat down this week to try my hand at “transfusing emotion.”
Let me know if you picked up the vibration.
Poetic Champions 