Rhapsody in an autumn garden
Vas István
Patches of damp invade your garden of light.
The sun rises late, remains a few short hours,
Frosts blacken and bite
Your dahlias, sunflowers,
Late autumn fires the petals of helianthus
Which gasp for the sun-but soon run out of time.
Their mortality illuminates and haunts us-
We do not share it with their kind.
The little cherry tree blushes-but how would it be
If the clouds suddenly burst (as well they might)?
Red leaves are lovelier when spinning free
Before damp wind in charismatic flight.
Already a deep natural instinct waits
On the punishment of stiff November showers:
Here at least the beautiful defeats
More ruinous powers.
I think of us-our hearts and guts and all.
I have no fear, for you or me, of death.
But why reach winter, should it be possible,
Brimming with self-disgust at every breath.
In beauty leaves and flowers pass away
But those who grasp at stars and lose their thread,
What can they do when winter bars their way
With earthly loathsomeness and dread?
Frozen dahlias, roses: our garden revives
And rises in full beauty though destroyed.
Now we'll see what we have gained, what thrives
Beyond skin, organ, gut and void.
It's autumn yet so fight with a will,
Defend yourself and earn remission
Until the victorious knowledge in the cell
Embarks on its final expedition.
In ten thousand years has there ever been
A beauty that has not been ours?
Do ordinary leaves and flowers
Store their light for the winter unseen?
There's nothing to be ashamed of:
There's more of beauty even in our foul
Decline, then in all the glittering stuff
Of flowers or of fowl.
Why else accumulate beauty from day to day
So prudently, what is it for
If not so that even in life's final struggle there may
Be beauty in store?
The masters, our ancestors, were not trifling when they
Created noble, lovely monuments:
They meant them for your last line of defence
In our wars against the forces of decay.
What do the flowers or vegetation know?
Imperious rockets, pursue your explosive trajectories!
Ours are beauties not of the earth: they grow
Down human centuries.
And always there's you and I-on Mars
Or the moon or wherever, who can tell,
Until we discover such magic formulas
We cannot rest nor sleep too well.
And time will yield you energies whose burning brand
Will set alight new constellations.
What's terrible now will turn to consolation,
And you will see and I will understand,
Your suffering reveal a pattern
More joyful, lovely, with greater powers:
And in your smile will open those long forgotten
Dahlias, sunflowers.
