On a wet, raw evening in late fall...

...there is no contentment such as comes from spiced rum.

Thanks Captain Morgan!

To entertain you this day, and to tide you over while I work on an answer for Kizz on the greater purpose of marriage, I offer you a poem from Georg Trakl to match the day from my view of it. Trakl, an Austrian poet from the early 20th century, took much of his inspiration from French impressionist movements in art and literature but his single published work of poetry, Gedichte (1913), was filled with dark and sorrowful references in which the imagery of autumn figure prominently. I am often filled with a sense of melancholy and foreboding this time of year, and this poem captures that for me.


In the evening, when the bells ring peace,
I follow the wonderful flights of birds,
That in long rows, like devout pilgrim-processions,
Disappear into the clear autumn vastness.

Wandering through the dusk-filled garden
I dream after their brighter destinies
And hardly feel the motion of the hour hands.
Thus I follow their journeys over the clouds.

Then a whiff of decay makes me tremble.
The blackbird complains in defoliated branches.
The red wine sways on rusty trellises.

Meanwhile like the death-dances of pale children
Around dark fountain edges that weather,
Shivering blue asters bend in the wind.