Selected Poems by Vivian Smith

Author:Vivian Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Limited
Published: 2021-11-14T02:57:04+00:00

Late April: Hobart

Turning from the mirror full of leaves

that draws the autumn garden through the room

I note that brown’s the colour of decay,

but in the garden how it just achieves

a sense of balance between rot and bloom

where old chrysanthemums lean all one way

as if an angle meant avoiding change.

Thick with its burden of excess and loss

this time of year depresses and elates:

all points of stillness hover out of range;

wind strips the season to its sticks and dross

and days to a blue scratched out of southern slates.

This autumn garden is decay of gold,

a waste of mildew, fading reds that glow

as in bare boughs the brown and gold respond.

Each day the corners lengthen shades of cold

and silver rain gives way to mountain snow

and black and sour grows the lily pond.

Gone are the statements of the summer dawn

when love grew more abundant with excess;

sustained by filth, fertility survives.

Fulfilment needs its time to be withdrawn

in its own silence, much like holiness.

In time each shifting harmony arrives.

And now it’s this dark brevity of gold

with so much withering as colours glow

as if the frugal with the fecund mates.

The sunlight dazzles with its April cold

and through the red the brown begins to show.

Beneath it all such final bareness waits.

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