Yet Another Autumn
Here are the first dried leaves of a very dry season,
Settling discreetly but finally in a white-washed
Corner, permanent and inevitable; puritan, even,
With a guild-like reverence for finished prints.
Nothing but chlorophyll has been working here,
Only to disappear by now into the printing press
Of a dried soil. I walk over the cracked plates
Of a busy year, that curious willow pattern
Of browned rims and veins turning dull blue
Of spent potato stalks and trimmed bamboos,
Only to come upon what was once a colour
Supplement of the Irish Times, as promising as
April when the sun’s warm rays curled its pages:
Something to do with a promise that’s very real,
Fashion last April, the effect of light and rain
Working like de Kooning upon our chaos within –
Consider the leaf grown and the leaf made in ink,
And how both may settle in a corner of our lost year
As two real but distinct lithographs of time
Passing through, of print made to stop and think.