Unnatural Autumn
Summer searing out the hearts of leaves,
hot heaviness spread wide across the land
and trees of green from side to side that stand
yellowed only by distance, like far corn sheaves.
The air is warm as a hot bath is warming
through lazy pollen-motes the bees come swarming;
a buzz of summer industry soothes late days
which slip by, shortening, yet still enwrapped
in sleep-dazed quiet. On dry paths flap
the fallen leaves, the few that know the season,
though all the world forgets. For some reason
these dead things remember autumn; they still bear
the dusky death that summer ought to bring,
or has brought, but all else know not death, stay where
the blasting heat has taken them, the undead trees,
plants curling sickened in the nightmare breeze,
the rotten rings of fungus petrified. The lengthened year,
fevered with summer, stays. The world's way halted,
though only the oncoming chill itself has faltered,
mechanical a clock still turns, the days move on;
October ends. November burns, slowly, in the dead sun.
hot heaviness spread wide across the land
and trees of green from side to side that stand
yellowed only by distance, like far corn sheaves.
The air is warm as a hot bath is warming
through lazy pollen-motes the bees come swarming;
a buzz of summer industry soothes late days
which slip by, shortening, yet still enwrapped
in sleep-dazed quiet. On dry paths flap
the fallen leaves, the few that know the season,
though all the world forgets. For some reason
these dead things remember autumn; they still bear
the dusky death that summer ought to bring,
or has brought, but all else know not death, stay where
the blasting heat has taken them, the undead trees,
plants curling sickened in the nightmare breeze,
the rotten rings of fungus petrified. The lengthened year,
fevered with summer, stays. The world's way halted,
though only the oncoming chill itself has faltered,
mechanical a clock still turns, the days move on;
October ends. November burns, slowly, in the dead sun.