Poem of the Day

A fellow poetry lover recommended J. Allyn Rosser’s Foiled Again, and I read it over the weekend. I was not previously familiar with the poet, and I liked this collection a lot. I feel I have to share this one because it very eloquently expresses my feelings every time someone runs a red light, flies up a lane about to be closed when tens (or hundreds!) of cars are more courteously merging and waiting, shows up in my lab expecting me to drop everything to address his/her issue, sends an e-mail demanding an immediate response. I can understand being in a hurry. I can’t understand such total disregard for the fact that someone else might be in a hurry, too. It’s the arrogance that takes my breath away, and I love how ridiculous Rosser makes the offender appear. My favorite line is: Can he catch up with his soul? Can he, indeed?

I hate rude behavior in a man; won’t tolerate it.
—Captain Woodrow F. Call in Lonesome Dove, after beating the snot (and various other bodily liquids) out of a decidedly rudely-behaving man.

Subway Seethe
By J. Allyn Rosser

What could have been the big to-do
that caused him to push me aside
on that platform? Was a woman who knew
there must be some good even inside
an ass like him on board that train?
Charity? Frances? His last chance
in a ratty string of last chances? Jane?
Surely in all of us is some good.
Better love thy neighbor, buddy,
lest she shove back. Maybe I should.
It’s probably just a cruddy
downtown interview leading to
some cheap-tie, careerist, dull
cul-de-sac he’s speeding to.
Can he catch up with his soul?
Really, what was the freaking crisis?
Did he need to know before me
if the lights searching the crowd’s eyes
were those of our train, or maybe
the train of who he might have been,
the person his own-heart-numbing,
me-shoving anxiety about being
prevents him from ever becoming?
How has his thoughtlessness defiled
who I was before he shoved me?
How might I be smiling now if he’d smiled,
hanging back, as though he might have loved me?

Yikes! Another zinger from Linda Pastan. She is so amazing!

The Quarrel
By Linda Pastan

If there were a monument
to silence, it would not be
the tree whose leaves
murmur continuously
among themselves;

nor would it be the pond
whose seeming stillness
is shattered
by the quicksilver
surfacing of fish.

If there were a monument
to silence, it would be you
standing so upright, so unforgiving,
your mute back deflecting
every word I say.

This one was also mentioned by a reader. It’s a horrifyingly matter-of-fact description of people’s last moments, before the bomb goes off.

The Terrorist, He Watches
By Wislawa Szymborska

The bomb will go off in the bar at one twenty p.m.
Now it’s only one sixteen p.m.
Some will still have time to get in,
Some to get out.

The terrorist has already crossed to the other side of the street.
The distance protects him from any danger,
And what a sight for sore eyes:

A woman in a yellow jacket, she goes in.
A man in dark glasses, he comes out.
Guys in jeans, they are talking.
One seventeen and four seconds.
That shorter guy’s really got it made, and gets on a scooter,
And that taller one, he goes in.

One seventeen and forty seconds.
That girl there, she’s got a green ribbon in her hair.
Too bad that bus just cut her off.
One eighteen p.m.
The girl’s not there any more.
Was she dumb enough to go in, or wasn’t she?
That we’ll see when they carry them out.

One nineteen p.m.
No one seems to be going in.
Instead a fat baldy’s coming out.
Like he’s looking for something in his pockets and
at one nineteen and fifty seconds
he goes back for those lousy gloves of his.

It’s one twenty p.m.
The time, how it drags.
Should be any moment now.
Not yet.
Yes, this is it.
The bomb, it goes off.

Here’s another one from The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy.

Queen Kong
By Carol Ann Duffy

I remember peeping in at his skyscraper room
and seeing him fast asleep. My little man.
I’d been in Manhattan a week,
making my plans; staying at 2 quiet hotels
in the Village, where people were used to strangers
and more or less left you alone. To this day
I’m especially fond of pastrami on rye.

I digress. As you see, this island’s a paradise.
He’d arrived, my man, with a documentary team
to make a film. (There’s a particular toad
that lays its eggs only here.) I found him alone
in a clearing, scooped him up in my palm,
and held his wriggling, shouting life till he calmed.
For me, it was absolutely love at first sight.

I’d been so lonely. Long nights in the heat
of my own pelt, rumbling an animal blues.
All right, he was small, but perfectly formed
and gorgeous. There were things he could do
for me with the sweet finesse of those hands
that no gorilla could. I swore in my huge heart
to follow him then to the ends of the earth.

For he wouldn’t stay here. He was nervous.
I’d go to his camp each night at dusk,
crouch by the delicate tents, and wait. His colleagues
always sent him out pretty quick. He’d climb
into my open hand, sit down; and then I’d gently pick
at his shirt and his trews, peel him, put
the tip of my tongue to the grape of his flesh.

Bliss. But when he’d finished his prize-winning film,
he packed his case; hopped up and down
on my heartline, miming the flight back home
to New York. Big metal bird. Didn’t he know
I could swat his plane from these skies like a gnat?
But I let him go, my man. I watched him fly
into the sun as I thumped at my breast, distraught.

I lasted a month. I slept for a week,
then woke to binge for a fortnight. I didn’t wash.
The parrots clacked their migraine chant.
The swinging monkeys whinged. Fevered, I drank
handfuls of river right by the spot where he’d bathed.
I bled with a fat, red moon rolled on the jungle roof.
And after that, I decided to get him back.

So I came to sail up the Hudson one June night,
with the New York skyline a concrete rainforest
of light; and felt, lovesick and vast, the first
glimmer of hope in weeks. I was discreet, prowled
those streets in darkness, pressing my passionate eye
to a thousand windows, each with its modest peep-show
of boredom or pain, of drama, consolation, remorse.

I found him, of course. At 3 a.m. on a Sunday,
dreaming alone in his single bed; over his lovely head
a blown-up photograph of myself. I stared for a long time
till my big brown eyes grew moist; then I padded away
through Central Park, under the stars. He was mine.
Next day, I shopped. Clothes for my main, mainly,
but one or two treats for myself from Bloomingdale’s.

I picked him, like a chocolate from the top layer
of a box, one Friday night, out of his room
and let him dangle in the air between my finger
and my thumb in a teasing, lover’s way. Then we sat
on the tip of the Empire State Building, saying farewell
to the Brooklyn Bridge, to the winking yellow cabs,
to the helicopters over the river, dragonflies.

Twelve happy years. He slept in my fur, woke early
to massage the heavy lids of my eyes. I liked that.
He liked me to gently blow on him; or scratch,
with care, the length of his back with my nail.
Then I’d ask him to play on the wooden pipes he’d made
in our first year. He’d sit, cross-legged, near my ear
for hours: his plaintive, lost tunes making me cry.

When he died, I held him all night, shaking him
like a doll, licking his face, breast, soles of his feet,
his little rod. But then, heartsore as I was, I set to work.
He would be pleased. I wear him now around my neck,
perfect, preserved, with tiny emeralds for eyes. No man
has been loved more. I’m sure that, sometimes, in his silent death,
against my massive, breathing lungs, he hears me roar.

It’s my birthday, and I’ll post an ESVM sonnet if I want to!

It came into her mind, seeing how the snow
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

It came into her mind, seeing how the snow
Was gone, and the brown grass exposed again,
And clothes-pins, and an apron—long ago,
In some white storm that sifted through the pane
And sent her forth reluctantly at last
To gather in, before the line gave way,
Garments, board-stiff, that galloped on the blast
Clashing like angel armies in a fray,
And apron long ago in such a night
Blown down and buried in the deepening drift,
To lie till April thawed it back to sight,
Forgotten, quaint and novel as a gift—
It struck her, as she pulled and pried and tore,
That here was spring, and the whole year to be lived through once more.

A reader alerted me to this poem with the comment, “it stopped my heart”. Of course, I had to go find the poem because I like poetry to have a strong effect on me. My heart is still beating, but it may have stopped for a moment… I found two translations, and went with the one by the author and Ted Hughes, found here. There is also an audio recording linked there, which I found worth listening to.

The Diameter of the Bomb
By Yehuda Amichai

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective
range—about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometres away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.

After watching Davis and White’s original ice dance to an Indian folk song (yes, I’m obsessed with the Olympics), I went looking for a poem by an Indian poet. I was further inspired to post this poem because it’s “snowing for fair” here in western NY.

Snowmen
By Agha Shahid Ali

My ancestor, a man
of Himalayan snow,
came to Kashmir from Samarkand,
carrying a bag
of whale bones:
heirlooms from sea funerals.
His skeleton
carved from glaciers, his breath
arctic,
he froze women in his embrace.
His wife thawed into stony water,
her old age a clear
evaporation.

This heirloom,
his skeleton under my skin, passed
from son to grandson,
generations of snowmen on my back.
They tap every year on my window,
their voices hushed to ice.

No, they won’t let me out of winter,
and I’ve promised myself,
even if I’m the last snowman,
that I’ll ride into spring
on their melting shoulders.

I was reminded of Shelley’s passion (or some may think he’s just a drama queen) by the exclamation points.

Love
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o’er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o’er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!

She leant against the arméd man,
The statue of the arméd knight ;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene’er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story—
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she know, I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another’s love,
Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face!

But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade,—

There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!

And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land!

And how she wept, and clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain—
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain;—

And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;—

His dying words—but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faultering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin-shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved—she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped—
The suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

‘Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly ’twas a bashful art,
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,
My bright and beauteous Bride.

This poem was suggested by a reader and I’m so glad to have found it. I went to college in Richmond, and drove down Monument Avenue many times. I don’t remember if I asked someone about the different poses of the statues, or I just heard about it. Lee died 5 years after the Civil War, and his (statue) horse has all four legs on the ground. Jeb Stuart was mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, and died the next day (his horse has one leg raised). Stonewall Jackson is a little trickier. I suppose he was not wounded in the heat of battle, but you could argue that he did succumb to effects from a wound sustained during a battle. His horse has all four hoofs on the ground, though. However, according to Wikipedia and Snopes, the whole equestrian sculpture theory is not supported by evidence. I still like the idea, though.

I enjoyed reading this interview with Collins, in which the genesis of the poem is described.

Statues in the Park
By Billy Collins

I thought of you today
when I stopped before an equestrian statue
in the middle of a public square,

you who had once instructed me
in the code of these noble poses.

A horse rearing up with two legs raised,
you told me, meant the rider had died in battle.

If only one leg was lifted,
the man had elsewhere succumbed to his wounds;

and if four legs were touching the ground,
as they were in this case—
bronze hooves affixed to a stone base—
it meant that the man on the horse,

this one staring intently
over the closed movie theater across the street,
had died of a cause other than war.

In the shadow of the statue,
I wondered about the others
who had simply walked through life
without a horse, a saddle, or a sword—

pedestrians who could no longer
place one foot in front of the other.

I pictured statues of the sickly
recumbent on their cold stone bed,
the suicides toeing the marble edge,

statues of accident victims covering their eyes,
and murdered covering their wounds,
the drowned silently treading the air.

And there was I,
up on a rosy-gray block of granite
near a cluster of shade trees in the local park,
my name and dates pressed into a plaque,

down on my knees, eyes lifted,
praying to the passing clouds,
forever begging for just one more day.

This poem was shared by a reader.

Debt
By Sara Teasdale

What do I owe to you
   Who loved me deep and long?
You never gave my spirit wings
   Nor gave my heart a song.

But oh, to him I loved,
   Who loved me not at all,
I owe the little open gate
   That led through heaven’s wall.

I feel the need to follow up yesterday’s selection from Byron with one of Shelley’s.

Hellas
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her wintry weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star;
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo claims the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies;
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

O write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death’s scroll must be—
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free,
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if naught so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven give.

Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.

O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy!
The world is weary of the past—
O might it die or rest at last!

This is for some friends and their newborn baby, Byron.

Stanzas for Music
By George Gordon, Lord Byron

   There be none of Beauty’s daughters
      With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
      Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming:

   And the midnight moon is weaving
      Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
      As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.

I love Ryan’s language in this poem.

Repulsive Theory
By Kay Ryan

Little has been made
of the soft, skirting action
of magnets reversed,
while much has been
made of attraction.
But is it not this pillowy
principle of repulsion
that produces the
doily edges of oceans
or the arabesques of thought?
And do these cutout coasts
and incurved rhetorical beaches
not baffle the onslaught
of the sea or objectionable people
and give private life
what small protection it’s got?
Praise then the oiled motions
of avoidance, the pearly
convolutions of all that
slides off or takes a
wide berth; praise every
eddying vacancy of Earth,
all the dimpled depths
of pooling space, the whole
swirl set up by fending-off—
extending far beyond the personal,
I’m convinced—
immense and good
in a cosmological sense:
unpressing us against
each other, lending
the necessary never
to never-ending.

It’s now about ten o’clock of a winter eve, and I can guarantee you I haven’t even been tempted to go for a walk. Instead I’m snug in my bed (and Penny is snug in hers).

Good Hours
By Robert Frost

I had for my winter evening walk—
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.

And I thought I had the folk within:
I had the sound of a violin;
I had a glimpse through curtain laces
Of youthful forms and youthful faces.

I had such company outward bound.
I went till there were no cottages found.
I turned and repented, but coming back
I saw no window but that was black.

Over the snow my creaking feet
Disturbed the slumbering village street
Like profanation, by your leave,
At ten o’clock of a winter eve.

I watched My Left Foot this morning.

Sunday Visit
By Christy Brown

We finally found him
curled up in the chair like a many-wrinkled shell
staring blindly out at nothing
among a gathering of imbecilic fossils
his one good eye fastening fiercely onto life
the hair still sturdy though silver under the old cloth cap.

We finally found him
through all that terrible labyrinth of grey concrete cells
quietly rounding out his days
alone in a morass of moronic camaraderie
his doomed cellmates snoozing and snoring all around
and he with his one good eye defying the shadows.

The tears came then
not soft, but real
the tears of a real man broken by life
groping wildly with gnarled fingers at the straws of life
in that awful room of no life
and the television set blaring forth its banalities
drowning whatever words of comfort our futile tongues could offer.

I had no words for him
no words to span the heartbreak of years
when Samson-like he had stood between us and chaos
bringing to us the small rare trinkets of his love.
I had for him only whiskey
the old bitter gift
the poor tribute of one poorer in spirit
than that jaded near-blind half-deaf soul reclining so tamely
in a wicker chair
in a ward of fearful paralysing resignation
a ward full of already dead people
sleeping as the television blared.

Yet the hand that gripped mine spelled out love
and the raw lovely courage of that old landscaped face
put my feeble pity to shame.

I read this one at American Life in Poetry. I think that one could probably write a book about things believed at age 5. I like how Koertge has distilled this to a few (unconnected) items in the first stanza.

First Grade
By Ron Koertge

Until then, every forest
had wolves in it, we thought
it would be fun to wear snowshoes
all the time, and we could talk to water.

So who is this woman with the gray
breath calling out names and pointing
to the little desks we will occupy
for the rest of our lives?

My cousin and her husband came over for dinner and we watched the Opening Ceremonies. It’s over 2 hours past my bedtime and I didn’t have anything on tap to post. Thankfully there was an e-mail from my poetry buddy waiting for me!

I’ve always liked the word clod.

The Clod and the Pebble
By William Blake

“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

“Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

I have yet to beef up my poetry file (to my shame), so in the absence of inspiration, I visit my bookmarks. Happily, tonight this led me to Cavafy again. The English translation is below, and here is the Greek text.

Finalities
By Constantine P. Cavafy

Amid fear and suspicions,
with agitated mind and frightened eyes,
we melt and plan how to act
to avoid the certain
danger that so horribly threatens us.
And yet we err, this was not in our paths;
the messages were false
(or we did not hear, or fully understand them).
Another catastrophe, one we never imagined,
sudden, precipitous, falls upon us,
and unprepared—there is no more time—carries us off.

I’m still sifting through potential wedding poems.

Life in a Love
By Robert Browning

Escape me?
Never—
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear—
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed—
But what if I fail of my purpose here?

It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again,—
So the chase takes up one’s life, that’s all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound,
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
I shape me—
Ever
Removed!

This is another one from my poetry pal.

The Perfect Moment
By Wendy Brown-Báez

Maybe it was when you stretched out on the
couch and said, Sing me a lullaby,
the way you clutched the pillow to your chest
like a young child and I became the
mama who knew what to do for her boy.

Maybe it was when I settled myself to take your
head into my lap, the way you became the man
I had caressed those years of floating
out the evening until we could go to bed
and I would be comforted by human warmth
to mask our haunting fear.

Maybe it was the way you sank into sleep
and I watched your breath rising and falling
until my hand grew still and I fell back against the
pillow and slept as well, satisfied.

It’s amazing how much you can read when you’re 1) stuck in an airport or 2) on a plane. Today I read The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I’d not read it before. A line in it reminded me this short poem. Here’s another for today.

Behold, the grave of a wicked man
By Stephen Crane

Behold, the grave of a wicked man,
And near it, a stern spirit.
There came a drooping maid with violets,
But the spirit grasped her arm.
“No flowers for him,” he said.
The maid wept:
“Ah, I loved him.”
But the spirit, grim and frowning:
“No flowers for him.”

Now, this is it—
If the spirit was just,
Why did the maid weep?

Here’s another one from Hafiz, sent by my poetry buddy. FYI - I’m going to an out-of-town wedding this weekend and not bringing my computer. I’ll have to suspend the PotD until I get back.

There have been many recorded versions of this song, and I really like it. Though written by an Irishman about the Irish Rebellion, it was popular during the U.S. Civil War, in which many Irish participated (on both sides).

The Minstrel Boy
By Thomas Moore

The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you will find him;
His father’s sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
“Land of Song!” said the warrior bard,
“Tho’ all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!”

The Minstrel fell! But the foeman’s chain
Could not bring that proud soul under;
The harp he lov’d ne’er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said “No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and brav’ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery!”

The Minstrel Boy will return, we pray;
When we hear the news, we all will cheer it,
The minstrel boy will return one day,
Torn perhaps in body, not in spirit.
Then may he play on his harp in peace,
In a world such as Heaven intended,
For all the bitterness of man must cease,
And ev’ry battle must be ended.

At the moment, my dearest dog (who did indeed receive a biscuit after eating her dinner like a good girl) is sleeping sprawled out on her bed with the tip of her pink tongue poking out. She’s also emitting tiny little snores. She is so incredibly cute that I can hardly stand it!

Biscuit
By Jane Kenyon

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.

I can’t bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.

The moon has been especially beautiful the last few nights (and mornings) when it’s been clear enough to see it. I like the images of Death as a beautiful friend and Love as the asker of unanswerable questions.

Under the Harvest Moon
By Carl Sandburg

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.