The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to an American poet —Louise Glück. She has a long, challenging poem: October. Not difficult to understand, but of subjects that confront us in difficult times. Her language is direct and beautiful.
Autumn has arrived in full force, and as Glück writes winter will come, so some images of the colors that are here with a few of her words excerpted from October.
Morton Arboretum
. . . .
Daybreak. The low hills shine
ochre and fire, even the fields shine.
I know what I see; sun that could be
the August sun, returning
everything that was taken away —
Great Blue Heron, South Pool, Busse Woods
. . . .
A day like a day in summer.
Exceptionally still.
Dark to light
. . . .
The brightness of the day becomes
the brightness of the night;
the fire becomes the mirror.
My friend the earth is bitter; I think
sunlight has failed her.
Bitter or weary, it is hard to say.
Golden Goose
. . . .
Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer;
bounty, balm after violence.
Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields
have been harvested and turned.
Busse Woods geese
. . . .
The light has changed;
middle C is tuned darker now.
And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. —
This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring.
The light of autumn: you will not be spared.
The songs have changed; the unspeakable
has entered them.
This is the light of autumn, not the light that says
I am reborn.
Great Egret
. . . .
Come to me, said the world.
This is not to say
it spoke in exact sentences
but that I perceived beauty in this manner.
. . . .
I stood
at the doorway,
ridiculous as it now seems.
What others found in art,
I found in nature. What others found
in human love, I found in nature.
Very simple. But there was no voice there.
Sterling Pond, Morton Arboretum
. . . .
The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful.
They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind.
They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish.
And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly
in anticipation of silence.
The ear gets used to them.
The eye gets used to disappearances.
— From Louise Glück, October