Remembering Brown
Turn 'round.
Dance to old leaves
falling to their burial.
Don't stop.
Nature dances brown, white, green
and sets the choreography
to be followed, to be caught
up in the step, up in the blank movement
where you forget
and the dance pulses
shifts color and mood
and turns again
remembering brown.
Dance to old leaves
falling to their burial.
Don't stop.
Nature dances brown, white, green
and sets the choreography
to be followed, to be caught
up in the step, up in the blank movement
where you forget
and the dance pulses
shifts color and mood
and turns again
remembering brown.
posted by Heather O'Neill | 16.11.05
6 Comments:
Fall is such a unique time of year. There are places where it's Spring or Summer all year long. There are places where Winter never seems to end. But there is no place on earth that can lay claim to Autumn. It's beauty and youth can't be grasped. Good words.
Thanks, Chuck.
I agree. Autumn turns our face from summer, causes us to reflect on our mortality, and to know that there is beauty in this change. At least it brings about those reflections in me. :)
Autumn and spring have always been my favorite seasons. There is so much change going on, that you can't help but notice the display. Summer is my steadfast season. Winter has a quiet beauty that shows me the truth of things, if I let it.
You've got me wondering about nature poetry that comes from those climates where it is always winter, or spring-summerish.
Ever listen to U2? On their 2nd they have a song called "October". It has a sort of haunting piano solo. It's a short song making you wish it would last a little longer. To me it captures the feeling of Fall's mortality.
I really love this. How memory is tied to a dance in nature--that's an insightful parallelism. It reminds me a little of Wallace Stevens' poem, Domination of Black--but yours is more hopeful.
Chuck-
U2 is great. Got the chance to listen to "October" tonight. I also wanted the music to last longer. The piece was beautiful,and captured the essence of fall and endings.
What I especially liked about the lyrics was that it seemed to imply that there is a definite ending to things like "kingdoms",and yet "you go on and on". There's something more.
Hey Jenni-
Thank you for your words(slight blush), and welcome.
I'd never read "Domination of Black", so I appreciate the mention of the poem. It's got me.:) I've read it at least five times now. Good stuff. The imagery of the constant "turning", and then the chilling "cry of the peacocks" combined with a night like the "color of the heavy hemlocks", is stifling, and frightning in a suffocating way if I watch/experience it as the narrator seems to. Black seems to swallow everything.
---
Domination Of Black
Wallace Stevens
At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry—the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?
Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
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