Chapter II

PICTURES
OF
AUTUMN

_Autumn_

(Parc Monceau)

I shall remember only these leaves falling
Small and incessant in the still air,
Yellow leaves on the dark green water resting
And the marble Venus there--
Is she pointing to her breasts or trying to hide them?
There is no god to care.

The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
And its reflection seems
Lost in the mass of leaves and unavailing
As a dream lost among dreams;
The colonnade curves close to the leaf-strewn water
A dream lost among dreams.

_September Day_

(Pont de Neuilly)

The Seine flows out of the mist
And into the mist again;
The trees lean over the water,
The small leaves fall like rain.

The leaves fall patiently,
Nothing remembers or grieves;
The river takes to the sea
The yellow drift of the leaves.

Milky and cold is the air,
The leaves float with the stream,
The river comes out of a sleep
And goes away in a dream.

_Fontainebleau_

Interminable palaces front on the green parterres,
And ghosts of ladies lovely and immoral
Glide down the gilded stairs,
The high cold corridors are clicking with the heel taps
That long ago were theirs.

But in the sunshine, in the vague autumn sunshine,
The geometric gardens are desolately gay;
The crimson and scarlet and rose-red dahlias
Are painted like the ladies who used to pass this way
With a ringletted monarch, a Henry or a Louis
On a lost October day.

The aisles of the garden lead into the forest,
The aisles lead into autumn, a damp wind grieves,
Ghostly kings are hunting, the boar breaks cover,
But the sounds of horse and horn are hushed in falling leaves,
Four centuries of autumns, four centuries of leaves.

_Late October_

(Bois de Boulogne)

Listen, the damp leaves on the walks are blowing
With a ghost of sound;
Is it a fog or is it a rain dripping
From the low trees to the ground?

If I had gone before, I could have remembered
Lilacs and green after-noons of May;
I chose to wait, I chose to hear from autumn
Whatever she has to say.