Autumn

Each year, a moment arrives when we say to ourselves: Autumn is here. That moment varies from year to year: the angle or the color of the sunlight; the appearance of the first red or yellow spray of leaves near the top of a tree; a warm breeze with a single chill thread running through it; the look of swaying bough-shadows on the dry grass of a meadow; beside a path, a bush with unknown, deep red berries. The list goes on.

Autumn Begins

Autumn begins unnoticed. Nights slowly lengthen,
and little by little, clear winds turn colder and colder,

summer's blaze giving way. My thatch hut grows still.
At the bottom stair, in bunchgrass, lit dew shimmers.

Meng Hao-jan (689-740) (translated by David Hinton), in David Hinton, Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China (Counterpoint 2002).

Cecil Gordon Lawson (1849-1882), "The Minister's Garden" (1882)

This moment of recognition does not move in step with the autumnal equinox. In my experience, it can occur any time from the middle of August onward. It happened for me this past week. On a late afternoon, I was walking down a slight slope towards a wide yellow field. A tree-lined road (closed to vehicles) ran through the middle of the field. The sky was deep blue, mottled with white clouds. I suddenly noticed that the entire scene, despite its clarity and brightness, was suffused in a golden, soft-edged light that came from everywhere and nowhere. Autumn had arrived.

By the Pool at the Third Rosses

I heard the sighing of the reeds
In the grey pool in the green land,
The sea-wind in the long reeds sighing
Between the green hill and the sand.

I heard the sighing of the reeds
Day after day, night after night;
I heard the whirring wild ducks flying,
I saw the sea-gull's wheeling flight.

I heard the sighing of the reeds
Night after night, day after day,
And I forgot old age, and dying,
And youth that loves, and love's decay.

I heard the sighing of the reeds
At noontide and at evening,
And some old dream I had forgotten
I seemed to be remembering.

I hear the sighing of the reeds:
Is it in vain, is it in vain
That some old peace I had forgotten
Is crying to come back again?

Arthur Symons, Images of Good and Evil (Heinemann 1899).

Despite its references to "the green land" and "the green hill," "By the Pool at the Third Rosses" has always felt like an autumn poem to me. "The sighing of the reeds," of course. Not to mention the melancholy and wistfulness of my beloved poets of the 1890s.

According to a note by Symons, the poem was written at Rosses Point, Ireland, on September 1, 1896. One hundred and twenty-two years ago today. Imagine that. It seems like only yesterday.