In autumn’s brief ardor I walked one day,
a creature of failing pride and glory,
the trees encrimsoning to the season,
the leaves complacent, and without story
perishing beautifully.

You hesitate to say too much,
and in a word’s absence a world goes by.
Then comes your own autumnal time
and you look about you emptily
for beautiful absences.

We do not, as some poets say,
perish like leaves, the leaves are brief
and simple and beautiful, their season of being
too short for memory or grief,
or words to speak them.

Memories cling to us, delusions
of time and grandeur and things that will last,
at least for a lifetime. But brief as a leaf
those things are blown into the past,
when your autumn comes,

when the wind speaks wordlessly through branches,
uttering dead leaves down the street,
and your faded pride and brittle glories
are scattered before you at your feet
like perished leaves.