photo by Norvell King
Tonight it feels like autumn in the mountains. Grey clouds obscure the stars and coyotes are howling. There is a breeze blowing the shuddering aspens that reflect stray silver light off shimmering leaves. A wind chime tinkles in the distance.
I am quiet and introspective tonight. I wrote a couple poems and I am tired. A delicious exhaustion earned by pushing my muscles earlier in the evening. I ran this evening and bicycled. I pushed my heart and had it tick a staccato of exertion that will ensure I sleep well.
I opened a bottle of blackberry mead two days ago and it sits in the refrigerator. I think that it is a good accompaniment for Yeats.
And I cannot live without poetry.
Two poems by W.B. Yeats:
THE FALLING OF THE LEAVES
AUTUMN is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.
The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.
HE REMEMBERS FORGOTTEN BEAUTY
WHEN my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God’s eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew,
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.