September, 1918
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.
Notes
Where William Stafford located peace in the sacred absence of violence—commemorating an unmarked border where no blood was ever spilled—Amy Lowell confronts the heavy burden of witnessing war from afar, standing in an American garden drenched in pristine autumn light while the trenches of Europe tear humanity apart. The speaking subject watches ripe fruit and falling leaves with an aching tenderness, refusing to let the day's golden clarity go to waste by carefully preserving the afternoon into memory, setting it aside like jars on a shelf for an unburdened future generation that will finally have the peace to savor it. It anchors September’s theme of Echo in an act of defiant temporal hope, showing how beauty can be stored away in the dark of history to reverberate forward, returning as an offering of healing long after the gunfire has quieted. #September #AmyLowell #Fall #War #Poetry
Amy Lowell, “September, 1918” from The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell. Copyright © 1955 by Houghton Mifflin Company.