Dolor Of Autumn

On Sunday and today as I was walking by the Lake Michigan near Northwestern University campus, I remembered D. H. Lawrence...and a particular poem I used to admire in 1989 about autumn, the ripe apple and the beauty of getting old...I had never thought of beauty in old age. Lawrence showed me the depth of beauty...The incredible astonishing diverse colors of life.


Dolor Of Autumn
By D. H. Lawrence

THE acrid scents of autumn,
Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear
Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn
And the snore of the night in my ear.

For suddenly, flush-fallen,
All my life, in a rush
Of shedding away, has left me
Naked, exposed on the bush.

I, on the bush of the globe,
Like a newly-naked berry, shrink
Disclosed: but I also am prowling
As well in the scents that slink

Abroad: I in this naked berry
Of flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;
And I in the stealthy, brindled odours
Prowling about the lush

And acrid night of autumn;
My soul, along with the rout,
Rank and treacherous, prowling,
Disseminated out.

For the night, with a great breath intaken,
Has taken my spirit outside
Me, till I reel with disseminated consciousness,
Like a man who has died.

At the same time I stand exposed
Here on the bush of the globe,
A newly-naked berry of flesh
For the stars to probe.




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