It's been a busy weekend of house guests and gallivanting and staying up too late. But yesterday morning, while they were sleeping, I did find time to yank out my frost-nipped scarlet runners and the endlessly productive eggplant. I harvested the last of the lettuce and planted my garlic, discovered a couple of overlooked carrots, and did some weeding in preparation for flower-bulb planting. Tonight we're supposed to get our first hard frost, so I know I'll soon be digging up dahlia tubers and ripping out the rest of the cosmos and nasturtiums. Then the garden will be down to leeks, chard, kale, and hardy salad greens.

For now, though, I'm sitting here in the Sunday morning dark, on the grey couch, against a bright pillow, under a circle of lamplight. The furnace is humming to itself. The mantel clock is ticking. Various men are snoring gently in their various beds. Outside, the sky is just beginning to blue; and across the street one shaded upstairs window glows.


Immortal Autumn

Archibald MacLeish

I speak this poem now with grave and level voice
In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season.
                                                               Now
No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,
Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,
Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows
Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:
There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn
Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves
And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow
We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know
The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.