The Human Seasons: Elements At War and Peace, Part Ii

2, Bourne loosely through the chill gusts, Disordered fragments of summer's life go hurried by, Harried to their last resting places Into piles of brittle, browning drifts Scattered on the stiffening ground. A cold sun, coursing ever more briefly Across these hard, blue-white skies, Presides above a sleeping landscape steeped in dying hues, The last fanfare of the greens of life Draining now into starkness As nature sheds her flesh and slows To pose in cold stillness between her cycles Of life and death, Waiting, as winter's uncertain, barren bride. In the house where the anger rang against the walls The red thoughts of their minds have burnt away To leave behind that sour feeling That sinks to sorrow Now that pride has stepped in to break the bridges Of charity they might have built back to one another. Between them those virtues which bind us all together, The formalities and incidents The long parade of small things that make up a shared life, Go on together as always, in smooth procession day to day The image of harmony exists, Though not its substance. They know from this the weight of the awkward silences Falling between them now and again Dropping like stones into the deepening pools Of unspoken discontents forming in their hearts; The ripples of sadness climbing in widening rings To skim the surfaces of their speech As the breezes blown down through the sapphire sky Tear the detritus of summer's corpse from its enfeebled moorings And fling the bits of yesterday's blazing beauty Into pell-mell drifts against foundations and sills, As spark-scattered frosts gather more thickly With every lengthening night.