Chilled

[rejectomorph]

Night turned cold again, dislodging even more mulberry leaves. There are plenty left, though. I'll be listening to them fall for at least six more weeks. This is the best time of year for the mulberry, when its thinning canopy turns yellow and colors the light that filters through. The effect is especially nice in late afternoon when, if the sun is bright, it makes the whole yard seem as though it were filled with a mist of honey. And then, on gray days, the leaves manage to glow as with their own light, a small patch of stored gold autumn sun lasting into winter.



Sunday Verse

Lullaby

by W.H. Auden


Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fever burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic, boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a look nor kiss be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.