Another poem of autumn

I’ve discoursed a couple of times, in my fashion, on Keats’s autumnal ode.  Here’s a small, delicate, simple, deep poem by the Canadian poet (and scholar and translator of Old English and Old Norse) George Johnston (1913-2004).  The words are mostly descended from Old English; simple, everyday names of the simple things of what was a world of field and fold (Old English feld and Old English fald).  Imagine a colon after the word “lamp” in the last stanza and you’ll see more quickly how the syntax works; and then take the colon out again and re-read the lines.  (The poem has to move quickly at that moment; it just has to, if it is to light up its last instant with the imagined color that holds out against the coming winter.  So: no colon.)

OCTOBER

Day falters and the fields

lie reconciled.  October.

The old man goes and sits

in the sun

under his maple

and feels the splendour on him.

His way into the dark

of dirt and stone:

through the blazing season.

Trusts it

as his beasts do

or the lit lamp his tree

struck by frost.

The Essential George Johnston, selected by Robyn Sarah.  Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2007.