The Children in Autumn

They are unconcerned with autumn now, the children Playing beneath this sudden blazing of the maples. Autumn might just as well have come, for all they notice, To the far Pacific’s islands or the boulevards of Naples.

I hear them playing loudly under the reddening myrtles The games they played when April captured the whitening park; Their signals are all the same and their laughing playmates even, But they do not see the embers of leaves that light the gathering dark.

Autumn is fast upon us, but not for the eyes of the children. It is for us, their elders, who carry its name in our talk, Who sensed it before the turning of a maple leaf or the sumac, Before a scarlet cinder fell from the salvia’s stalk.