RESIGN THE HARVEST

Those sad September days

Accumulate.

A tractor ploughs autumn

Into the soil.

Leaves tinge with melancholia,

Tingle with threat of frost.

Rusted barley crashes

Before off-yellow combine harvesters.

It is not now possible

To talk of renewal.

We are fed the myths of childhood,

Yet here the ripe and rotten merge –

Merge, and submerge summer

On the marron side of rouge…

Apotheosis, decay.

Sibelius knew it, this disorder,

This going down with the leaves,

This etiolation.

Sunset lies enmeshed in network branches;

Poppies coagulate in the remaining barley.

Trench warfare is close.

(Michael Newman)

18 Courtiers Drive

Bishops Cleeve

Cheltenham

Glos GL52 4NU