Autumn

Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows,

And all of summer’s stunning afternoons will be gone.

I already hear the dead thuds of logs below

Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.

All of winter will return to me:

derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice,

And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison,

My soul will harden into a block of red ice.

I shiver as I listen to each log crash and slam:

The echoes are as dull as executioners’ drums.

My mind is like a tower that slowly succumbs

To the blows of a relentless battering ram.

It seems to me, swaying to these shocks, that someone

Is nailing down a coffin in a hurry somewhere.

For whom?—It was summer yesterday; now it’s autumn.

Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.