Autumn Evening

HERE is a world where everything is shifting,
A fading world beneath the fading splendor
Of evening earlier than yesterday,
Darker and earlier. The night too soon
Chilling an earth still stubble-warm with summer
Settles like dust, like death, upon these meadows.
Cool light slips over them, light still slips over
On slowly flowing air; brightness still brims
Clear pools of air between the drifting shadows,
The leaf’s edge and the cloud’s edge still are bright,
But all is darkening, all will dim and darken
And ebb away to evening, ebb to autumn.
Without a sound, without a lapping ripple
Summer flows past, flows out upon the wind
Under the darkening sky. A flight of shadows
Up from the ground takes wing, and in the branches
Dark shapes among dark boughs give out a cry,
The windy cry of crows, as if the autumn
Spoke in their throats, a sound of cold and darkness,
The sound of winter wind in leafless woods.