FunesSeptember Ode by Donald Hall
And now September burns the careful tree
That builds each year the leaf and bark again
With solemn care and rounded certainty
That nothing lives which seasons do not mend.
But we were strangers in that formal wood
Those years ago, and we have grown to change,
Ignorant of the fury of the blood,
And we have tasted what is new and strange.
This new September’s pilgrimage is made,
Remembering that season of the mind
When we were Tamburlaines of leaf and shade
And Alexanders of the lusty wind.
But only seasons spin around the tree
In winter thick and summer narrow bark;
The person learns a changing cruelty;
Possessions cumber us from going back.
Only the young are really pitiable
Who walk from high school past my cluttered room,
Who live in last night’s party, and who tell
What happened in the darkened living room.
That innocence is only negative
And innocence is only not to know
That all intensity is curative
In the disease of love we undergo.
This room is cluttered with the truth of years,
Possessions of the unreturning blood.
And innocence possesses only fears
Of parting from the comfort of the wood.
Wealthy with love and fruitful memory,
I pity only those who have no guilt.
It is the structure of complicity,
The monument experience has built.
The tree is burning on the autumn noon
That builds each year the leaf and bark again.
Though frost will strip it raw and barren soon,
The rounding season will restore and mend.
Yet people are not mended, but go on,
Accumulating memory and love.
And so the wood we used to know is gone,
Because the years have taught us that we move.
We have moved on, the Tamburlaines of then,
To different Asias of our plundering.
And though we sorrow not to know again
A land or face we loved, yet we are king.
The young are never robbed of innocence
But given gold of love and memory.
We live in wealth whose bounds exceed our sense,
And when we die are full of memory