Archibald MacLeish

Autumn is in full swing – a holding pattern as we quickly move towards the winter season.

Here’s a poem by Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892 – April 20, 1982), American poet and writer, who was associated with the modernist school of poetry. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

Immortal Autumn

I speak this poem now with grave and level voice
In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall
Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season.

Now

No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,
Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,
Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows
Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:
There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn
Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves
And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow
We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know
The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air
Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.
I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.

--Archibald MacLeish, “Immortal Autumn” from Collected Poems 1917-1982. Copyright © 1985 by The Estate of Archibald MacLeish.