2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate the chill edge of a sub tropical autumn night . Its not Armidale where the gas heater is out of gas and its not Kalang . But sitting very still – there is a chill. Just a little.
Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all.”
– Stanley Horowitz
The sunset hangs on a cloud;
A golden storm of glittering sheaves,
Of fair and frail and fluttering leaves,
The wild wind blows in a cloud.
Hark to a voice that is calling
To my heart in the voice of the wind:
My heart is weary and sad and alone,
For its dreams like the fluttering leaves have gone,
And why should I stay behind?
To Autumn
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may’st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.
“The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust’ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather’d clouds strew flowers round her head.
“The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.
The poem about an autumn fan is in a Yue Fu style;18 in it Ban Jieyu compares herself to an autumn fan discarded after the summer heat. The expression “autumn fan” came to mean a discarded lover.
Newly cut fine white silk,
Clear and pure as frost and snow.
Made into a fan for joyous trysts,
Round as the bright moon.
In and out of my lord’s cherished sleeve,
Waved back and forth to make a light breeze.
Often I fear the arrival of the autumn season,
Cool winds overcoming the summer heat.
Discarded into a box,
Affection cut off before fulfillment.
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days
which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
~ P. D. James
kalidasa Songs Autumn
THE autumn comes, a maiden fair
In slenderness and grace,
With nodding rice-stems in her hair
And lilies in her face.
In flowers of grasses she is clad;
And as she moves along,
Birds greet her with their cooing glad
Like bracelets’ tinkling song.
A diadem adorns the night
Of multitudinous stars;
Her silken robe is white moonlight,
Set free from cloudy bars;
And on her face (the radiant moon)
Bewitching smiles are shown:
She seems a slender maid, who soon
Will be a woman grown.
Over the rice-fields, laden plants
Are shivering to the breeze;
While in his brisk caresses dance
The blossomed-burdened trees;
He ruffles every lily-pond
Where blossoms kiss and part,
And stirs with lover’s fancies fond
The young man’s eager heart.
This English translation of “Autumn” was composed by Arthur W. Ryder (1877-1938)
Autumn Song
The long tears
Of Autumn’s
Violins
Wound my heart
With a monotonous
lethargy.
All suffocating
And pale when
The hour strikes,
I remember
The old days
And I cry…
And I am going away
On an ill wind
That carries me
Here, there,
Just like a
Dead leaf.
