Already it is upon me, the melancholia of September. We're barely passed Labor Day! Oh, well. To fit with my mood, here is "September Midnight" by Sara Teasdale:
Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,This Friday's Poetry Round-Up can be found at Picture Book of the Day. Stop by for some fabulous links!
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.
Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.
Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.
I love Sara Teasdale! And I'm with her/you on listening to the insects before the silence of winter comes. I miss their steady (sometimes irritating) "ceaseless, insistent" noise/song.
ReplyDeleteI learned the Spanish word for cicada/locust this week when one of my girls (a GIRL!!!) brought in some shells and corpses she had collected: chicharra. Say it out loud a couple of times in a row (roll the r's) -- doesn't it sound like their song??? :-)
Thanks for stopping by, ladies. I do like the cooler weather, but still, the change in the light is what I find the most puzzling in the fall. It is rich and golden, yet I find it also depressing.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mary Lee, for explaining about chicharra. I love looking up animal names in different languages. Squirrel is ardilla in Spanish, écureuil in French, wiewiórka in Polish, ekorn in Norwegian, tupai in Indonesian--all so very different! (And don't you just LOVE the internet that allows you to look up and translate words almost instantaneously!)