"The Region November"

I fear that the recent spate of seasonally-themed posts may have turned this blog into a Farmer's Almanac of sorts -- without the prescient weather predictions.  But the temptation in this, my favorite season, is too great and I am too weak.  And thus . . .

               The Region November

It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,
So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

Saying and saying, the way things say
On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

A revelation not yet intended.
It is like a critic of God, the world

And human nature, pensively seated
On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,
The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying.

Wallace Stevens, "Late Poems," Collected Poetry and Prose (1997).

If you prefer a seasonal variation on Stevens's refrains, you may wish to consider the final stanza of Philip Larkin's "The Trees":

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

High Windows (Faber and Faber 1974).

                          Stanley Roy Badmin, "November" (c. 1958)