The light falls so variously here

 

 Here's a poem by Henrik Nordbrandt

The Glass Door 

"Like someone who opens a door of glass

or sees his own reflection in it

when he returns from the woods

the light falls so variously here at the end of October

that nothing is whole or can be made into a whole

because the cracks are too uncertain and constantly moving.

 

Then you experience the miracle

of entering into yourself like a diamond

in glass, enjoying its own fragility

when the storm carries everything else away

including the memory of a freckled girlfriend

out over the bluing lake hidden behind the bare hills."

-   Henrik Nordbrandt,  The Glass Door

    Translated by Thomas Satterlee

Here's a poem by Irish poet Harry Clifton:

October

The big news around here is the fall of leaves

In Harrington Street and Synge Street,

Lying about in pockets, adrift at your feet

As you kick them away. The other news is the trees—

Their yellow, as I speak, is unbelievable,

Not that you need me to tell you. Everywhere

The house is falling down around our ears

And it’s wonderful, in the dry, spicy air,

How quietly it happens. Close your eyes,

Don’t think, just listen. Hear them fall, the years

We came towards each other, out of a sun

Already westering. Look at us, even yet,

Exchanging tree-lore, twenty years on

In a leafless cathedral—bride and groom, well-met.

 

—Harry Clifton, from The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass (2012)