To Himself in Autumn / Maurice Lesemann

To Himself in Autumn

from “Brushwood”

Take bitterness into your wailing;
Be like the rock, the hard gray stone;
See there is hunger in your ailing,
Walk scornfully and alone.
Walk scornfully on the fall-brown hills;
And maybe where the wind heaves
And scatters the littered poplar leaves,
Releasing tardy ones to the ground,
You will hear the faint authentic sound
And remember why the wind grieves.

~~
Maurice Lesemann (1899-1981)
from Poetry, April 1920

[Poem is in the public domain in the United States]