Oh, spoiled favourites of virgin autumn skies,
how proud, how noble, how pure
is your communion with them and how demure
and gracious your fall when it defies
the grayness of the roads’ boring concrete
enhancing now those shorter days.
Your vibrancy appears never conquered:
a bright shimmer of September rays
is splashing light, welcomed, in your stars,
when you create patterns on the scars
of earth and on the cracks of pavements
as if it is your gratitude, your payment
for your existence and humble recognition
for joys of summer... Nothing mars
these splendid carpets’ saturating vision.
Then you adorn the pavements for a while
for the pedestrians to tread on you and press,
for winds and rain to sweep you and to pile
by fences till the rotting, brown mess
resembles an unpleasant muddy slime
disintegrating in the pores of time
and no one deplores your fate: you faze
the human senses, for untold sadness
is burgeoning already those days
without adding more to our madness
of contemplating death in your remains,
and we are now urging you to vanish
when road-sweepers from the pavements banish
your insolence of blocking our drains.
31 August 2011