Le Sacre de l'Automne

Although the green'ry glows with youthful light,
How long remains until its shade
Is but a dream through which we wade
While lusting after gems of yesternight?
Not long from here, I tell you true, my friend,
For see you there the welkin grey?
Tomorrow I must go to pray
At Samhain's feast to welcome in the End.

Did Phaethon but yesterday recede
Beyond his door of earthy rock
And leave us here, as if to mock
Our haughty holding of eternal greed?
Indeed, the gods crave naught except to show
Their pitied creatures what they lack
And send crazed dæmons on their track--
Thus we, despaired, await the minent snow.

Then well may I ask, Why must I be present at Samhain's feast,
If all the office it serves is to welcome in some primordial, wintry beast?
Why call in a god
Who punishes my fraud
And praises not my labour in the sod?
Why call in the fay
Whose dances, happy and gay,
Herald no thing but a vault of slaty grey?
Why indeed?

And yet,
Whence come our smiles
At sighting the first snowdrops through melting piles
Of the white blanket that once stretched for miles?
For the lotus, in all his beauty sheer,
Could ne'er grow to such a state
Without the mud I curse, standing here.

Perhaps the greying of the vault will hide
The candid sun's lucif'rent hands.
But she has gone to brighten lands
And spread her holy radiance far and wide.
And she'll return to set things right,
But only once we've passed this age of night.

Lil Mugi

probably not that profound

The past always seems easy. 

The future always seems uncertain. But it is always now.

BODO