Autumn

 

Inside me the season is autumn,

The chill is in me, you can see through me,

And I am sad, but not altogether cheerless,

And filled with humility and goodness.

 

But if I rage sometimes,

Then I am the one who rages, shedding my leaves,

And the simple thought comes sadly to me

That raging isn’t really what we need.

 

The main need is that I should be able

To see myself and the struggling, shocked world

In autumnal nakedness,

When even you, and the world, can be seen right through.

 

Flashes of insight are the children of silence.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t rage aloud.

We must calmly cast off all mere noise

In the name of the new foliage.

 

Something has apparently happened to me,

And I am relying on nothing but silence,

When the leaves laying themselves one on another

Inaudibly become the earth.

 

And you can see it all, as if from a height,

When you manage to shed your leaves at the right time,

When without passion inner autumn

Lays its airy fingers on your forehead.

 

 —Y. Yeutushenko