It’s finally October, and it’s finally chilly.
Autumn-wise, UD‘s a gusty / Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights sort of person; but she gets how for a lot of people autumn is melancholy.
Maybe it’s because of all the doleful news stories lately about young, sensitive people wracked by the world, but UD finds herself pondering this autumn poem in particular. It’s by D.H. Lawrence.
Dolor of Autumn
The acrid scents of autumn,
Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear
Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn
And the snore of the night in my ear.
[Read aloud, scents can be taken as sense, which works as well as scents… The scent at the end of reminiscent keeps the muddying wordplay in play, already hinting at a confused and disordered world. Fear everything/tear-trembling is a nice vaguely rhymed pair which again hints at things tumbling about in disarray. The snore of the night makes the night one of those beasts — makes the world itself a threatening beast slinking toward the frightened speaker. The vivacity of the autumnal world is somehow insidious, ominous here.]
For suddenly, flush-fallen,
All my life, in a rush
Of shedding away, has left me
Naked, exposed on the bush.
[Flush, rush, bush – Lawrence packs his short stanzas with assonance, end-rhyme. Sheltering leaves have flushed and fallen off, leaving the speaker exposed, at the mercy of the world.]
I, on the bush of the globe,
Like a newly-naked berry, shrink
Disclosed: but I also am prowling
As well in the scents that slink
[The earth is like a berry-bearing bush on which we are the berries. Luxuriant summer covers us with warming and protective foliage, but chill and windy autumn shears off that shelter, and we shrink in the disclosing wind.]
Abroad: I in this naked berry
Of flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;
And I in the stealthy, brindled odours
Prowling about the lush
[Dismayed is fun – literally, robbed of May… Some aspect of the speaker is also prowling about, not shrinking back inside himself; he’s both naked inside the berry and prowling…]
And acrid night of autumn;
My soul, along with the rout,
Rank and treacherous, prowling,
Disseminated out.
[His naked physical body trembles inside the berry; his soul prowls the autumnal night. Disseminated out is an awkward phrase, lacking the tight rhythmic feel of the rest of the poem. Yet the word disseminated has inside it semen and seed, so there’s a suggestion of the seed of the berry cast into the world by the autumn wind. And the poet has already used dismay, so disseminated doesn’t sound all that out of place.]
For the night, with a great breath intaken,
Has taken my spirit outside
Me, till I reel with disseminated consciousness,
Like a man who has died.
[So the poet has been ripped in two by the autumn wind, his very life spirit blown away into the night, leaving him, inside his house, a dead husk.]
At the same time I stand exposed
Here on the bush of the globe,
A newly-naked berry of flesh
For the stars to probe.
[The tear-trembling stars regard the tragedy of human life unsheathed, stripped of cover and consolation; the speaker fears everything, as he says in his first stanza, because now the earth is sheer animal life, the breathing of a beast, and our vulnerability is no match for its mindless animal power.]
October 3rd, 2010 at 8:31PM
Tangent–UD, are there any audiopoetry books you might recommend? I don’t read poetry well but am thinking I might do better listening to it on my walk to school, etc…
October 3rd, 2010 at 10:07PM
Hi dance: I actually don’t do audiopoetry – or audio-anything, come to think of it! – books… I listen to it here, and on youtube, but that’s about it…
October 4th, 2010 at 6:46AM
Dear UD,
Thank you so much for this. I love these rare gems among your posts (although I read all with great interest). Thank you for sharing so generously your skill and your metier.
shalom,
Steven
October 4th, 2010 at 6:47AM
Many thanks, Steven.
October 4th, 2010 at 7:42AM
I thought you might not, but took a flyer. I’ll search poets.org for options, though. Thanks!