autumn

The air deals blows: surely too hard, too often?

No: it is bent on bringing summer down.

Dead leaves desert in thousands, outwards, upwards,

Numerous as birds; but the birds fly away,

And the blows sound on, like distant collapsing water,

Or empty hospitals falling room by room

Down in the west, perhaps, where the angry light is.

Then rain starts; the year goes suddenly slack.

O rain, o frost, so much has still to be cleared:

All this ripeness, all this reproachful flesh,

And summer, that keeps returning like a ghost

Of something death has merely made beautiful,

And night skies so brilliantly spread-eagled

With their sharp hint of a journey – all must disperse

Before the season is lost and anonymous,

Like a London court one is never sure of finding

But none the less exists, at the back of the fog,

Bear earth, a lamp, scrapers. Then it will be time

To seek there that ill-favoured, curious house,

Bar up the door, mantle the fat flame,

And sit once more alone with sprawling papers,

Bitten-up letters, boxes of photographs,

And the case of butterflies so rich it looks

As if all summer settled there and died.

Philip Larkin