October
O leafy yellowness you create for me
A world that was and now is poised above time,
I do not need to puzzle out Eternity
As I walk this arboreal street on the edge of a town.
The breeze too, even the temperature
And pattern of movement is precisely the same
As broke my heart for youth passing. Now I am sure
Of something. Something will be mine wherever I am.
I want to throw myself on the public street without caring
For anything but the prayering that the earth offers.
It is October over all my life and the light is staring
As it caught me once in a plantation by the fox coverts.
A man is ploughing the ground for winter wheat
And my nineteen years weigh heavily on my feet.
~~
Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967)
from Come Dance with Kitty Stobling, and other poems, 1960
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]
.jpg)
Ian Sane, Autumn in Old Town, 2018. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
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