Tony Kelly:
A beautiful Autumn slips inexorably into watery Winter as the sinking Sun heeds not, but briefly of a fleeting day, the sadness and the sighing of the Goddess in her garb of grey. The rain in runnels and in ruts has wrought a frown upon her faded face, and the bosom where in Summer was her beauty and her bounty borne, lies cold and clammy in the clinging clay. The turd hole, overburdened with the drainage from the soggy soil, disgorges a noisome cocktail of nitrogenous waste at the end where the land slopes downward and away, and the last insects of the dying year cluster on the island turds that, more submerged than floating, are retained by the muddy rim. Now a thin sheet of ice extends from the water-logged grass roots. Puddles lie upon the paths and errant feet have made them mires of mud. All the lady ferns are blasted by the frost, their fronds all purplish black and brown and gaunt like ghostly replicas of things that once had lived, and male ferns too are nipped in the tips of the pinnae, and a group of golden dandelions that only yesterday from the side of the compost heap blazed glory to the midday Sun will see that Sun no more, for the frost that froze last night was hard and sudden and the ice crept over the windows and the grass was all a crackle underfoot.
Brown are the clustered seeds that hang in bunches from the ash trees bare of leaf. The willows are all but naked where but a few yellow leaves are lingering amid the lonely limbs. The distant hedgerows are brown, and their cloaks will be white before they wear the green again. Green lingers yet on elder and alder, on hazel where tight-curled catkins cringe before the longest night, and on sapling oak trees where a yellowish hue and a hint of brown suffuse the oaken tree. Nettles hold high their heads, all unbeknowing that, in the suddenness of the slaughter, their feet are already dead and the debris festers on the frozen ground.
Yet beauty lingers in the wild. The beech trees, slowly changing through the long and beautiful Autumn, retain still a few of their golden leaves, but most lie in a thick orange-brown carpet about their feet and over the paths, and the air is spiced with their sweetness and with memories of a love that, joyful in the May and full and golden in the Summer, lingers yet awhile, though little she has to clothe her frozen fingers and her withered hands and her bare and bony arms. Do the bright scarlet berries of the guelder rose gleam fiery red in the cold to mock her in her misery and her mourning and deride her for her gaunt grey skeleton and the tatters of her faded summer gown? Or is it for her memory and a burning love they bear their burden like a pain that is made all of sweetness and of sorrow, that yearns for forgetfulness, and were it offered, would count memory as precious beyond price? For memories she has left, though she be empty now, song and laughter where now her tears are on the hills; yet even in her fading her scents are all of loveliness beneath the golden trees.
But the night skies of Winter are black as velvet and the frost has set the stars a sparkling. Out of the south comes the Milky Way, intricate, beautiful, dark-laned and white and studded with stars like many-faceted jewels. And high overhead it rises before it goes down into the darkness and distance of the northern hills. And up there in the very zenith among the silvery radiance is the great cross of Cygnus, the Swan, winging its way on the stellar road to the five bright stars of Cassiopeia that lie to the north. There is Auriga too, the ancient Charioteer, waiting in the west to the side of the silvery lanes, while the Great Bear, low in the sky, is prowling among the western hills. The Native Americans say she is looking for a place to hibernate. Perhaps she is looking for her cub? And he's there too, high in the sky, leading a merry dance about the pole star.
It's a good time of the year for the brilliant stars. There's Altair up there to the east of the Milky Way and south of Cygnus, and there's Vega too, the brilliant green star, further to the west towards the Great Bear. Out of the east rise the Pleiades, like a silvery cloud on a misty night, but brilliant little points of light when the sky is black and hard. And in their wake comes the red star, Aldebaran in the horn of the Bull.
Later, preferably much later and when the night is growing old, the giant figure of Orion the Hunter, most spectacular of all the constellations, stands clear on the hills of Blaenau in the east, the red gem of Betelgeuse ablaze at his shoulder and his gem-studded sword hung from his starry belt; and of the gems of the scabbard, two are of a clear light, and one is misty. And there too is the yellow light of Saturn, creeping slowly away from the day and into the blackness of the winter night.
A beautiful Autumn slips inexorably into watery Winter as the sinking Sun heeds not, but briefly of a fleeting day, the sadness and the sighing of the Goddess in her garb of grey. The rain in runnels and in ruts has wrought a frown upon her faded face, and the bosom where in Summer was her beauty and her bounty borne, lies cold and clammy in the clinging clay. The turd hole, overburdened with the drainage from the soggy soil, disgorges a noisome cocktail of nitrogenous waste at the end where the land slopes downward and away, and the last insects of the dying year cluster on the island turds that, more submerged than floating, are retained by the muddy rim. Now a thin sheet of ice extends from the water-logged grass roots. Puddles lie upon the paths and errant feet have made them mires of mud. All the lady ferns are blasted by the frost, their fronds all purplish black and brown and gaunt like ghostly replicas of things that once had lived, and male ferns too are nipped in the tips of the pinnae, and a group of golden dandelions that only yesterday from the side of the compost heap blazed glory to the midday Sun will see that Sun no more, for the frost that froze last night was hard and sudden and the ice crept over the windows and the grass was all a crackle underfoot.
Brown are the clustered seeds that hang in bunches from the ash trees bare of leaf. The willows are all but naked where but a few yellow leaves are lingering amid the lonely limbs. The distant hedgerows are brown, and their cloaks will be white before they wear the green again. Green lingers yet on elder and alder, on hazel where tight-curled catkins cringe before the longest night, and on sapling oak trees where a yellowish hue and a hint of brown suffuse the oaken tree. Nettles hold high their heads, all unbeknowing that, in the suddenness of the slaughter, their feet are already dead and the debris festers on the frozen ground.
Yet beauty lingers in the wild. The beech trees, slowly changing through the long and beautiful Autumn, retain still a few of their golden leaves, but most lie in a thick orange-brown carpet about their feet and over the paths, and the air is spiced with their sweetness and with memories of a love that, joyful in the May and full and golden in the Summer, lingers yet awhile, though little she has to clothe her frozen fingers and her withered hands and her bare and bony arms. Do the bright scarlet berries of the guelder rose gleam fiery red in the cold to mock her in her misery and her mourning and deride her for her gaunt grey skeleton and the tatters of her faded summer gown? Or is it for her memory and a burning love they bear their burden like a pain that is made all of sweetness and of sorrow, that yearns for forgetfulness, and were it offered, would count memory as precious beyond price? For memories she has left, though she be empty now, song and laughter where now her tears are on the hills; yet even in her fading her scents are all of loveliness beneath the golden trees.
But the night skies of Winter are black as velvet and the frost has set the stars a sparkling. Out of the south comes the Milky Way, intricate, beautiful, dark-laned and white and studded with stars like many-faceted jewels. And high overhead it rises before it goes down into the darkness and distance of the northern hills. And up there in the very zenith among the silvery radiance is the great cross of Cygnus, the Swan, winging its way on the stellar road to the five bright stars of Cassiopeia that lie to the north. There is Auriga too, the ancient Charioteer, waiting in the west to the side of the silvery lanes, while the Great Bear, low in the sky, is prowling among the western hills. The Native Americans say she is looking for a place to hibernate. Perhaps she is looking for her cub? And he's there too, high in the sky, leading a merry dance about the pole star.
It's a good time of the year for the brilliant stars. There's Altair up there to the east of the Milky Way and south of Cygnus, and there's Vega too, the brilliant green star, further to the west towards the Great Bear. Out of the east rise the Pleiades, like a silvery cloud on a misty night, but brilliant little points of light when the sky is black and hard. And in their wake comes the red star, Aldebaran in the horn of the Bull.
Later, preferably much later and when the night is growing old, the giant figure of Orion the Hunter, most spectacular of all the constellations, stands clear on the hills of Blaenau in the east, the red gem of Betelgeuse ablaze at his shoulder and his gem-studded sword hung from his starry belt; and of the gems of the scabbard, two are of a clear light, and one is misty. And there too is the yellow light of Saturn, creeping slowly away from the day and into the blackness of the winter night.