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Where does one begin when it comes to autumn?  And where does one begin when it comes to the poetry of autumn?  For some unknown reason, these lines by Ezra Pound (a translation of lines written by Li Po in the 8th Century) suddenly arrive, unbidden: "What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,/There is no end of things in the heart."  (Ezra Pound, "Exile's Letter," in Cathay (Elkin Mathews 1915), page 22.)  (An aside: I first read these lines when I was a sophomore in college, taking a course titled "Yeats, Pound, and Eliot."  I was in the midst of falling in love with poetry. Fifty years later, here I am: still in love, still falling in love anew.)

Well, yes, autumn: "There is no end of things in the heart."  And thus, each autumn, one returns to what one loves in the season, and in the poetry of the season.  As long-time (and much-appreciated!) readers of this blog may recall, I have on more than one occasion described autumn as the season of bittersweet wistfulness and of wistful bittersweetness.  What is one to do with such beauty, with its passing, with its loss?  But I am merely repeating what each of us already knows, aren't I?

                         Standing in the Evening

In the yellow dusk I stand alone before the Buddha hall;

pagoda tree blossoms fill the ground, cicadas fill the trees.

Each of the four seasons brings a pang to the heart,

but something special -- the sadness of these autumn days!

Po Chü-i (772-846) (translated by Burton Watson), in Po Chü-i, Selected Poems (Burton Watson, editor) (Columbia University Press 2000), page 50.  In China, pagoda trees bloom in late summer or early autumn, depending upon the region in which they are located.

Here is another poem by Po Chü-i, one which I visit each year as autumn makes its first appearance.

                            The Cranes

The western wind has blown but a few days;

Yet the first leaf already flies from the bough.

On the drying paths I walk in my thin shoes;

In the first cold I have donned my quilted coat.

Through shallow ditches the floods are clearing away;

Through sparse bamboos trickles a slanting light.

In the early dusk, down an alley of green moss,

The garden-boy is leading the cranes home.

Po Chü-i (translated by Arthur Waley), in Arthur Waley, More Translations from the Chinese (George Allen & Unwin 1919), page 57.  The poem is written in the eight-line lü-shih ("regulated verse") form, which, in addition to having tonal and rhyming requirements, calls for verbal parallelism in the second and third couplets. (See Burton Watson (editor), The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984), pages 8-12, 374.)

Cecil Gordon Lawson (1849-1882), "Cheyne Walk, Chelsea" (1870)

Since mid-September, I had been waiting to see my first woolly bear caterpillar of the year.  To no avail.  I had nearly given up hope.  A few weeks ago, out on my afternoon walk, I thought to myself (my walking thoughts are quite mundane): "I guess I won't be seeing any woolly bears this year."  Then, after about ten minutes of walking along an asphalt pathway that passes between two large meadows, I saw a small dark shape up ahead of me in the middle of the pathway. I approached, and there it was: a woolly bear crossing from one meadow to the other, heading westward toward the waters of Puget Sound and the setting sun.

I did what I always do in these circumstances (and for which I seek neither credit nor praise, since this is something we all do, I presume): I stood watch in the middle of the pathway to make certain that he or she made a safe passage, unharmed by inattentive walkers or bicyclists.  In the focused, single-minded, and, yes, lovable fashion of woolly bears, it successfully crossed the pathway and disappeared into the dry grass of the meadow.  And so, as always happens with humans and woolly bears -- who meet only to part -- we each went our destined way.

A wonderful coincidence?  A lovely moment of serendipity?  So one might say.  Prosaically.  But I was not content to leave it at that on the afternoon on which the woolly bear and I shared a brief interval of time and space in the World.  Nor am I content to leave it at that now. The World sends us messages.  Unexpectedly.  It is up to each of us to make of them what we will.  I had received a message.  The message was wordless.  And words cannot explain it. 

A butterfly flits

All alone -- and on the field,

A shadow in the sunlight.

Bashō (1644-1694) (translated by Makoto Ueda), in Makoto Ueda, Bashō (Twayne Publishers 1970), page 50.

     People are few;

A leaf falls here,

     Falls there.

Issa (1763-1828) (translated by R. H. Blyth), in R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 4: Autumn-Winter (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 364.

     The stillness;

A bird walking on the fallen leaves:

     The sound of it.

Ryūshi (died 1681) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 365.

     The leaf of the paulownia,

With not a breath of wind,

     Falls.

Bonchō (died 1714) (translated by R. H. Blyth), Ibid, page 130.

"In old-fashioned novels, we often have the situation of a man or a woman who realizes only at the end of the book, and usually when it is too late, who it was he or she had loved for many years without knowing it.  So a great many haiku tell us something that we have seen but not seen.  They do not give us a satori, an enlightenment; they show us that we have had an enlightenment, had it often, -- and not recognized it."  (R. H. Blyth, Haiku, Volume 3: Summer-Autumn (Hokuseido Press 1952), page 322 (italics in the original text).)

Another way of looking at the World's messages:

"Gifts are still occasionally given us, particularly when we have not asked for them, and I cling to the hope of understanding the link between certain of them and our inner life, their meaning in relation to our most persistent dreams."  (Philippe Jaccottet (translated by Mark Treharne), Landscapes with Absent Figures (Delos Press/Menard Press 1997), page 3.)

Reginald Brundrit (1883-1960), "Autumn by the River"

At times, words are not sufficient.  Nor are they required.  Perhaps (likely?) at the most important times.  So says a person who loves poetry.  So says a person who has maintained a blog (fitfully) for more than 15 years, relying upon words.  A person who returns each autumn -- faithfully and unfailingly -- to the beautiful words of the following poem.

                 Leaves

The prisoners of infinite choice 

Have built their house

In a field below the wood

And are at peace.

It is autumn, and dead leaves

On their way to the river

Scratch like birds at the windows

Or tick on the road.

Somewhere there is an afterlife

Of dead leaves,

A stadium filled with an infinite

Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven

Of lost futures

The lives we might have led

Have found their own fulfilment.

Derek Mahon, The Snow Party (Oxford University Press 1975).

"Remember what an Atom your Person stands for in respect of the Universe, what a Minute of unmeasurable Time comes to your share, and what a small Concern you are in the Empire of Fate!"  (Marcus Aurelius (translated by Jeremy Collier), Meditations, Book V, Section 24, in Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), The Emperor Marcus Antoninus: His Conversations with Himself (1701), page 78.)

It all comes back to the leaves, their rising and their falling.  While we are here, and after we are gone.

                    Under Trees

Yellow tunnels under the trees, long avenues

Long as the whole of time:

A single aimless man

Carries a black garden broom.

He is too far to hear him

Wading through the leaves, down autumn

Tunnels, under yellow leaves, long avenues.

Geoffrey Grigson, The Collected Poems of Geoffrey Grigson, 1924-1962 (Phoenix House 1963).

William Samuel Jay (1843-1933)

"At the Fall of Leaf, Arundel Park, Sussex" (1883)

"In a lifetime how many springs do we see?"  This is the final line of "Pear Blossoms by the Eastern Palisade," a four-line poem by Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) which has appeared here on several occasions. However, as Po Chü-i observes above in "Standing in the Evening": "Each of the four seasons brings a pang to the heart."  Thus, with apologies and gratitude to Su Tung-p'o, I find myself thinking: "In a lifetime how many autumns do we see?"  This thought is a product of age, no doubt.  Which, I should add, is not a bad thing.

                                   Autumn Ends

Lost in vacant wonder at how the months flow away in silence,

I sit alone in my idle hut, thinking endless thoughts.

An old man's cares, like these leaves, are hard to sweep away.

To the sound of their rustling I see autumn off once again.

Tate (pronounced ta-tay) Ryuwan (1762-1844) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson, The Poetry of Ishikawa Jozan and Other Edo-Period Poets (North Point Press 1990).  The poem is in the form of a kanshi, a poem written in Chinese by a Japanese poet, adhering to the strict rules of traditional Chinese prosody.

The following poem provides a lovely and moving complement to Tate Ryuwan's poem:

When I was young, not knowing the taste of grief,

I loved to climb the storied tower,

loved to climb the storied tower,

and in my new songs I'd make it a point to speak of grief.

But now I know all about the taste of grief.

About to speak of it, I stop;

about to speak of it, I stop

and say instead, "Days so cool -- what a lovely autumn!"

Hsin Ch'i-chi (1140-1207) (translated by Burton Watson), in Burton Watson (editor), The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (Columbia University Press 1984), page 371.  The poem is untitled.

Autumn.  The World.  Sending us messages.  Gifts, as Philippe Jaccottet would say.  

The wind has brought

     enough fallen leaves

To make a fire.

Ryōkan (1758-1831) (translated by John Stevens), in John Stevens (editor), One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan (Weatherhill 1977), page 67.

James McIntosh Patrick (1907-1998), "Autumn, Kinnordy" (1936)

"A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"

In my previous post, I suggested that, although poetry should not set out to edify, it does provide us with inklings of what it means to be a human being in a transitory world.  For instance (and speaking solely for myself), poetry may provide (in conjunction with the hard facts of reality) a needed slap in the face that awakens one from a sleepwalk that has been going on for weeks, months, years -- nay, decades.

I do not believe that art is life or that life is art.  But they do at times suddenly intersect.  The following poem is one of my favorite poems.  Apart from loving it for its beauty, I had blithely and arrogantly convinced myself that I had taken its lesson to heart.  As it turns out, I knew nothing, absolutely nothing.  And now I have lived it.

A slumber did my spirit seal;
     I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
     The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
     She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
     With rocks, and stones, and trees.

William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800).

Duncan Grant, "Window, South of France" (1928)

The third line of the final stanza of Walter de la Mare's "Fare Well" seems to be a direct echo of the first line of Wordsworth's poem.

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour.  Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
        Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
        In other days.

Walter de la Mare, Motley and Other Poems (1918).

Paying attention -- paying loving attention -- is a duty we owe to the sad and beautiful world and to those making their way through the world with us.  A simple thing, one would think.  One would think.  But, as we all know, simple things are often easier said than done.

Duncan Grant, "Girl at the Piano" (1940)

Ezra Pound seems a world away from William Wordsworth and Walter de la Mare, but he had his moments.  He wrote the following untitled poem in his younger years, before he embarked on the mad project of The Cantos.

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
                       Not shaking the grass.

Ezra Pound, Personae (1926).

Duncan Grant, "The Doorway" (1929)

"I Desired My Dust To Be Mingled With Yours Forever And Forever And Forever"

I knew nothing of Chinese poetry until I encountered the following poem by Li Po (701-762) in the mid-1970s, when I was in college.  I thought then, and I still think, that it is one of the loveliest poems that I have ever read.

Richard Eurich, "Docks at Goole, Early Morning" (1971)

          The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me.  I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
                              As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Li Po (translated by Ezra Pound), in Ezra Pound, Cathay (1915).

Richard Eurich, "Robin Hood's Bay in Wartime" (1940)

Whatever one may think of Ezra Pound, he deserves our gratitude for having played a key role in introducing Chinese poetry to English-speaking audiences.  He, along with Arthur Waley (whose work I have commented upon before), pioneered the translation of Chinese poetry into English at the beginning of the 20th century.

In general, I tend to share Philip Larkin's view of Pound's less-than-beneficent influence on Western culture.  Pound was one of the infamous "three Ps" identified by Larkin:

"This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by Parker [Charlie], Pound or Picasso:  it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure. It will divert us as long as we are prepared to be mystified or outraged, but maintains its hold only by being more mystifying and more outrageous:  it has no lasting power."

Philip Larkin, All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-1971 (Faber and Faber 1985), page 27.  Larkin includes the following footnote to the above passage:  "The reader will have guessed by now that I am using these pleasantly alliterative names to represent not only their rightful owners but every practitioner who might be said to have succeeded them."  Ibid.

However, I think that Pound did not go off the deep end poetically, philosophically, politically, and psychologically until he abandoned lyric poetry for The Cantos around 1917 or so.  Prior to that time he wrote some fine poems.  Further, his exploration of non-English poetry led him to Chinese poetry, which resulted in the beautiful translations contained in Cathay.  Although Pound has been criticized for not always being faithful to the original Chinese texts, he did bring an instinctive poetic sensibility to the translations, which is evident in "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter."

Richard Eurich, "Dorset Cove" (1939)

"I Have Been A Hazel-Tree, And They Hung The Pilot Star And The Crooked Plough Among My Leaves"

There was a time (during my college years and immediately thereafter) when I was in love with the poetry of Yeats.  I'm sure that many others have had the same experience.  A few lines can capture the essence of this youthful infatuation.  "When you are old and grey and full of sleep . . ."  "A pity beyond all telling/Is hid in the heart of love . . ."  "The trees are in their autumn beauty,/The woodland paths are dry . . ."  "And the white breast of the dim sea/And all dishevelled wandering stars."  It is easy to see why I was beguiled.

But at some point it all seemed too high-pitched.  Added to that was Yeats's penchant for self-dramatization and for oracular pronouncements based upon questionable cosmologies.  And then I discovered, in turn, Thomas Hardy, Edward Thomas, and Philip Larkin.  I immediately felt:  "This is more like real life."

Don't get me wrong:  in terms of sheer volume of beautiful and memorable poems, Yeats has few (or, perhaps, no) equals.  His poetry still delights me when I read it.  But, as the saying goes, the thrill is gone.  I am perfectly willing to concede that my falling out of love is due to a spiritual, emotional, and/or aesthetic failure on my part.  Or perhaps I just grew old. (After all, The White Album no longer means to me what it once did.)

All of this leads up to a lovely poem by Yeats -- a poem that goes well with Ezra Pound's "I stood still and was a tree amid the wood."

Samuel Palmer, "The Gleaning Field" (c. 1833)

   He Thinks of His Past Greatness when a Part
                of the Constellations of Heaven

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel-tree, and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
May not lie on the breast nor his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies.
O beast of the wilderness, bird of the air,
Must I endure your amorous cries?

W. B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).

Nobody does this sort of thing better than Yeats.  I confess that I can still feel the pull.

Samuel Palmer, "Harvest Moon" (c. 1833)

"I Stood Still And Was A Tree Amid The Wood"

In "The Trees," Philip Larkin writes:  "The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said."  The lines bring to mind two lines from Wallace Stevens's "The Motive for Metaphor":  ". . . you were happy in spring,/With the half colors of quarter-things."

As spring progresses, the leaves of the trees move through innumerable shades of green.  On a sunny day, the larger leaves are diaphanous, with all the variations of green taking on a tinge of sun-shot yellow.  If it is breezy, their green shadows sway and flutter against each other, flowing like a stream.

Stephen McKenna, "An English Oak Tree" (1981)

                        The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

Ezra Pound, A Lume Spento (1908).

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Daphne (line 3) is transformed into a laurel tree as she is pursued by Apollo.  The "god-feasting couple old" (line 4) refers to the story of Baucis and Philemon in Metamorphoses.  The couple provided a meal to Zeus and Hermes when no one else in their village would do so. As a reward, Zeus spared their lives when he destroyed the village and its inhospitable residents.  He also granted their wish that, should one of them die, the other would die at the same time.  Much later, as they died of old age, they embraced, and as they did so they were transformed into intertwining trees:  an oak and a lime.  Pound uses "elm-oak" (line 5).

Stephen McKenna, "Foliage" (1983)