Another lovely poem, such precise imagery creating a quiet melancholy (but not hopeless) atmosphere. This is probably just me, but I have difficulty pronouncing "scents" much differently from "sense" and when I think of "sense" in those first lines, it adds a dimension to the poem which I very much like. All these scents have some sense to offer us about life . . . I also love the final line: "sad songs of Autumn mirth." An oxymoron that seems to me to sum up life itself.
The seasons all have their individual essence as do days. The best some can manage is TGI Friday; but perhaps those reading this don’t need ww anything to be drunk on decaying birch, and excited by Micklemas😸
This poem calls to mind Seamus Heaney's poem, Digging, which begins with a metaphor of the pen as a gun and ends with the pen as a spade and in between recalls his father digging in the garden and his grandfather digging peat. I wonder was Heaney thinking of Thomas, the solder-poet, digging in his garden?
I misapplied the caption on the painting in this post. The picture is Pissarro's Landscape at Louveciennes (Autumn), from the Getty Museum, not his Autumn in Eragny. Fixed now.
Another lovely poem, such precise imagery creating a quiet melancholy (but not hopeless) atmosphere. This is probably just me, but I have difficulty pronouncing "scents" much differently from "sense" and when I think of "sense" in those first lines, it adds a dimension to the poem which I very much like. All these scents have some sense to offer us about life . . . I also love the final line: "sad songs of Autumn mirth." An oxymoron that seems to me to sum up life itself.
This is a WW1 battlefield in transmogrification though, no?
Yes, I think, with the burned waste given a horrific irony.
Yes, I can’t unsee shattered bloody limb bones in rhubarb and celery sticks. Genius imagery.
And any garden is bound to be the first, Edenic one--in fall here. Lovely poem and essay--and comments, too. I won't tire of Thomas anytime soon.
The seasons all have their individual essence as do days. The best some can manage is TGI Friday; but perhaps those reading this don’t need ww anything to be drunk on decaying birch, and excited by Micklemas😸
This poem calls to mind Seamus Heaney's poem, Digging, which begins with a metaphor of the pen as a gun and ends with the pen as a spade and in between recalls his father digging in the garden and his grandfather digging peat. I wonder was Heaney thinking of Thomas, the solder-poet, digging in his garden?
It is indeed enough.
As one writer wrote, about the separation of life and the union in death: “The pain of separation is as nothing, The joy of union is all.”.
Lovely essay and poem.
I misapplied the caption on the painting in this post. The picture is Pissarro's Landscape at Louveciennes (Autumn), from the Getty Museum, not his Autumn in Eragny. Fixed now.
Thank you so much for this sensitive account of the poem, which really makes one want to read it again and again.
I will anxious to read the comments. I read this as him digging a grave, perhaps his. Thanks again for this workday delight.
A good thought, the gravedigging.