For the autumn is come again speaking with its soft-tongued winds to the trees and to me things I have never heard before; things that her white breasts never told me; things that her burning lips never said to me; wild, sad things that the flame from whence my songs once leaped never held for me.
The dull silvered poplar leaves float in the air like dead butterflies, and they are beautiful.
Death Song
Last night you came and sat by my bed in a little dark room and boasted to me like a child.
“I have come to destroy the sun,” you said; “I will take the great, yellow sun in my fingers and blow on it once and it will go out like a match.”
And I wondered, because the sun is so large and hot, how such a little one as you could blow it out like a match.
But you said: “I will blow once into the night and the stars will sputter like little flames in a great wind and scatter away in ashes. And the moon will spin around and around like a bright coin until it breaks into little black bits.”
And I wondered because the night was so far, how such a little breath as yours could reach into its soul.
But you said: “I will go out and touch the trees and the green leaves will shrivel and the brown trunks will vanish. I will breathe just once on the houses, the great big houses of iron and wood and stone, and they will sway like long pieces of black cloth in the wind and they will melt into a dark mist.”
And I wondered and wondered.