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Autumn Elegy
Poems by Dana Gioia
Music by Stefania de Kenessey
2. The End Of The World
"We're going", they said, "to the end of the world."
So they stopped the car where the river curled,
1 Veterans' Cemetery
And we scrambled down beneath the bridge'
On the gravel track of a narrow bridge.
The ceremonies of the day have ceased,
Abandoned to the ragged crow's parade. We tramped for miles on a wooded walk
The flags unravel in the caterpillar's feast. Where dog-hobble grew on its twisted stalk.
The wreaths collapse onto the stones they Two ospreys watched from the opposite
shade. shore
While slowly the current built to a roar.
How quietly doves gather by the gate
Like souls who have no heaven and no hell. We came to a bend, where the river grew
The patient grass reclaims its lost estate wide
Where one stone angel stands as sentinel. And green mountains rose on the opposite
side.
The voices whispering in the burning leaves, My guides moved back. I stood alone,
Faint and inhuman, what can they desire As the current streaked over the smooth flat
When every season feeds upon the past, stone.
And summer's green ignites the autumn's
fire?
Shelf by shelf the river fell.
The white-water goosetailed with eddying
The afternoon's a single thread of light
swell.
Sewn through the tatters of a leafless
Faster and louder the current dropped
willow,
Till it reached a cliff, and the trail stopped.
As one by one the branches fade from sight,
And time curls up like paper turning yellow. I stood at the edge where the mist ascended,
My journey done where the world ended.
I looked downstream. There was nothing
but sky,
The sound of the water, and the water's
reply.
3. A Curse On Geographers
We want an earth to walk upon,
Not reasons to remain at home.
Shall we make journeys only to see
The same stars circling in the night?
Breathe the same air? Sail across
These oceans only to discover
Our own island's other shore?
Let oceans spill their green from off
The edges of the earth, and let
The curving plain unbend itself
Behind the mountains. Put wind back
Into the cheeks of demons. Voice,
Pronounce your reasonable desire
And sing the round earth flat again!
Poems O by Dana Gioia
(Used by permission)