November / Amy Lowell

November

The vine leaves against the brick walls of my house
Are rusty and broken.
Dead leaves gather under the pine-trees,
The brittle boughs of lilac-bushes
Sweep against the stars.
And I sit under a lamp
Trying to write down the emptiness of my heart.
Even the cat will not stay with me,
But prefers the rain
Under the meagre shelter of a cellar window.

~~
Amy Lowell
from Pictures of the Floating World, 1919

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Amy Lowell biography

DV, Rain outside Window, 2011. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.