Poetry can feel like a safe that you don’t have the key to. Its teasingly clear words appear to shroud a subjective, infinitely deep and complex meaning behind them. I like to think of poetry as a page with an imagination that extends behind every word like root hairs out of epidermal cells, expressing a relatable feeling that the language of logic is incapable of. Beautifully, the short length of most poetry allows readers to rip apart, question, and reassemble it with visual ease and satisfaction. I believe that poetry heals a preoccupied mind. British entrepreneur and poet William Siegart is the author of The Poetry Pharmacy, a collection of poems with the goal to ease suffering, loneliness, and heartbreak, themes especially relevant in a global pandemic. With a similar purpose, as an avid lover of and believer in poetry, here is a list of six poems to take a break from the whirlwind of life, reflect on what is troubling us, and grow more self-aware.
- “Gathering Leaves” by Robert Frost
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“Gathering Leaves” is about feeling meaningless in a world of repetition and the curiousness of the world’s infinite nature. The speaker gathers a non-crop to make life worth living, giving the reader hope in the sometimes overwhelming uncertainty of our existence which may preoccupy us.
Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.
I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.
But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.
I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?
Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.
Next to nothing for use,
But a crop is a crop,
And who’s to say where
The harvest shall stop?
- “November Night” by Adelaide Crapsey
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In “November Night,” Adelaide Crapsey gives the reader a taste of the unsettling comfort we may feel during this season in a short cinquain that, like poetry itself, gives sound the power to tease our imaginations.
Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
And fall.
- “A Reminiscence” by Richard O. Moore
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“A Reminiscence” by Richard O. Moore encapsulates nostalgia, love, and the ephemeral nature of life. As the speaker recalls a memory inside the house of nature, he makes peace with the idea that the past is past.
Held in a late season
At a shifting of worlds,
In the golden balance of autumn,
Out of love and reason
We made our peace;
Stood still in October
In the failing light and sought,
Each in the other, ease
And release from silence,
From the slow damnation
Of speech that is weak
And falls from silence.
In the October sun
By the green river we spoke,
Late in October, the leaves
Of the water maples had fallen.
But whatever we said
In the bright leaves was lost,
Quick as the leaf-fall,
Brittle and blood red.
- “L’automne” by Alphonse Lamartine
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For francophones, “L’automne” by Romantic poet Alphonse Lamartine explores the inevitability of death within a continuous, sublime natural world. As the speaker pronounces his goodbyes to the outdoors in the aftermath of his lover’s passing, he in panic realizes his regrets — what he has not done yet. However, there is a beauty in this realization: the autumn scenery and the act of poetry itself have made his thoughts clear and his mind aware of its own limited consciousness.
Salut ! bois couronnés d’un reste de verdure !
Feuillages jaunissants sur les gazons épars !
Salut, derniers beaux jours ! Le deuil de la nature
Convient à la douleur et plaît à mes regards !
Je suis d’un pas rêveur le sentier solitaire,
J’aime à revoir encor, pour la dernière fois,
Ce soleil pâlissant, dont la faible lumière
Perce à peine à mes pieds l’obscurité des bois !
Oui, dans ces jours d’automne où la nature expire,
A ses regards voilés, je trouve plus d’attraits,
C’est l’adieu d’un ami, c’est le dernier sourire
Des lèvres que la mort va fermer pour jamais !
Ainsi, prêt à quitter l’horizon de la vie,
Pleurant de mes longs jours l’espoir évanoui,
Je me retourne encore, et d’un regard d’envie
Je contemple ses biens dont je n’ai pas joui !
Terre, soleil, vallons, belle et douce nature,
Je vous dois une larme aux bords de mon tombeau ;
L’air est si parfumé ! la lumière est si pure !
Aux regards d’un mourant le soleil est si beau !
Je voudrais maintenant vider jusqu’à la lie
Ce calice mêlé de nectar et de fiel !
Au fond de cette coupe où je buvais la vie,
Peut-être restait-il une goutte de miel ?
Peut-être l’avenir me gardait-il encore
Un retour de bonheur dont l’espoir est perdu ?
Peut-être dans la foule, une âme que j’ignore
Aurait compris mon âme, et m’aurait répondu ? …
La fleur tombe en livrant ses parfums au zéphire ;
A la vie, au soleil, ce sont là ses adieux ;
Moi, je meurs; et mon âme, au moment qu’elle expire,
S’exhale comme un son triste et mélodieux.
- “November for Beginners” by Rita Dove
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In “November for Beginners,” Rita Dove challenges nature and death in a simultaneously empowering and stagnant poem about people and the point of our existence. She communicates a human energy that is capable of strength beyond pain and fear.
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!
- “Sonnet 73: That time of year that mayst in me behold” by William Shakespeare
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In Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73: That time of year that mayst in me behold,” the speaker playfully and darkly uses autumn imagery to describe how his lover perceives him. However, the speaker expresses that the hopeful idea that true love persists despite the inevitability of death makes life worth living. (Finally, something positive!)
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Realize that all these poems share common themes of nostalgia, death, and reflection. It is strange to think that one season touches us all so deeply, and nature subtly imitates our emotions and fears. One could therefore say that our minds need the fall so we can cope with being limited beings in a world which knows no bounds.