Poems From Providence - The Poet's Press

OCTOBER THOUGHTS IN WAR-TIME
What does October mean?
To the old Bolshevik the month we finally took what was
ours —
to the old émigré the month we lost everything,
and had to flee to the border.
To the Spanish and Portuguese, Italians and Greeks,
taking café in treeless plazas,
the aftermath of equinox, a few brown slurries of oak leaves
skittering from Alps to the sea, not a time, but a passing,
To the Chinese, a mottled dream of maple, gingko,
ailanthus and willow, in which one pale
and angular scholar, his beard as thin as an artist’s brush,
takes tea in his gazebo, as the autumn’s white tiger
runs down the bounding deer.
For me, in this New England city,
it is not quite autumn.
I spy the moon’s new crisped crescent
hovering above the Hopkins house.
An angry Mars is at its nearest —
all these heavenly bodies tugging at treetops.
The Unitarian bell tolls eight, as Uranus,
a dim flickering, grazes the steeple
as though curious to know
for whom the clabber sounds the bronze.
The weary earth has had enough explosions.
Winter will yield up autumn,
if autumn will erase its merry carnage.
If leaves do not fall, perhaps the heads of state
will leave decisions undecided,