One last Autumn...

Autumn Journal

September has come and I wake

And I think with joy how whatever, now or in the future, 

the system

Nothing whatever can take

The people away, there will always be people

For friends or for lovers though perhaps

The conditions of love will be changed and its vices

diminished

And affection not lapse

To narrow possessiveness, jealousy founded on vanity. 

September has come, it is hers

Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, 

Whose nature prefers

Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace;

So I give her this month and the next

Though the whole of my years should be hers who has

rendered already

So many of its days intolerable or perplexed

But so many more so happy;

Who has left a scent on my life and left my walls

Dancing hair is twined in all my waterfalls

And all of London littered with remembered kisses. 

So I am glad

That life contains her with her moods and moments

More shifting and more transient than I had 

Yet thought of as being integral to beauty;

Whose mind is like the wind on a sea of wheat, 

Whose eyes are candour, 

And assurance in her feet

Like a homing pigeon never by doubt diverted. 

To whom I send my thanks

That the air has become shot silk, the streets are music, 

And that the ranks

Of men are ranks of men, no more of cyphers.

So that if now alone

I must pursue this life, it will not be only 

A drag from numbered stone to numbered stone

But a ladder of angels, river turning tidal. 

Off-hand, at times hysterical, abrupt, 

You are one I shall always remember, 

Whom cant can never corrupt

Not argument disinherit. 

Frivolous, always in a hurry, forgetting the address, 

Frowning too often, taking enormous notice

Of hats and backchat- how could I assess

The thing that makes you different?

You whom I remember glad or tired, 

Smiling in drink or scintillating anger, 

Inopportunely desired

On boats, on trains, on roads when walking. 

Sometimes untidy, often elegant, 

So easily hurt, so readily responsive, 

To whom a trifle could be an irritant 

Or could be balm and manna.

Whose words would tumble over each other and pelt

From pure excitement,

Whose fingers curl and melt

When you were friendly.

I shall remember you in bed with bright

Eyes or in a cafe stirring coffee

Abstractedly and on your plate the white

Smoking stub your lips had touched with crimson. 

And I shall remember how your words could hurt

Because they were so honest

And even your lies were able to assert

Integrity of purpose. 

And it is on the strength of knowing you

I reckon generous feeling more important 

Than the mere deliberating what to do 

When neither the pros nor cons affect the pulses. 

And though I have suffered from your special responses, 

I should be proud if I could evolve at length

An equal thrust and pattern. 

- Louis MacNeice