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The spiked limes of chestnut plummet and burst,
Gaping like fledglings’ mouths, disgorging nuts
Glossy as foals. The sunspot dahlia, cursed
By rust, sags, and the mauve aster abuts
The
ground. Apples, pears, blush ripe and are gathered;
Plums
are downy like cheeks, though whitepox mould Rots the fallen. Leafage, jaundiced and weathered
Like skin, dangles dolefully, rueing the cold.
Night
darkness deepens and sunrise is damp;
Mist
like a low tide sluices the coppice.Birds are silent; and, bodies in a hump,
Folk rush to work, their faces like pumice.
The
angry wasp dies. Unmindful, the sheep
In
the fields await slaughter. Autumn’s effacementLooms, and like children feverish in sleep
Folk fidget, resisting the abatement
Of
blood and flesh. Post-equinox, the rains
At
last begin – a drenching, drumming fallFrom cloud like a taut sheet, engulfing drains,
Stained with the city’s lights like yellow gall.
A
gale follows. Mountainous gun-metal cloud
Invests
the horizon. Battle-primed windAssaults the sopping ash trees, barrels loud
In subways. Later, the assault declined,
Sunlight
cracks the siege towers’ plinths and domes,
Searing
them gold and white with lacquers, chromes.
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© October 2012