Autumn poems: I have a weakness for autumn. It is a season that fills me with both contentment and melancholy. Tranquillity, restraint, thoughtfulness and reflection are the associations that spring to mind when I hear the word autumn. Also sadness and remembrance. All topics that no longer seem to have a place in our shrill, loud and hysterical times.
In my opinion, character traits such as introversion, sensitivity and modesty, but also feelings such as sadness and shyness, are increasingly being pathologised and aggressively pushed out of everyday life. I suspect this is because they do not fit in with the holy grail of the consumerist lifestyle or with the thoroughly commercialised party-hardy event culture of our society. All the more reason for me to find writing and reading poems, and especially poems about autumn, a welcome private counterweight to these trends.
In this post, I have put together a small selection of my autumn poems that are dedicated to this season and its themes:
AUTUMN STORMS
In the sky I see dark clouds gathering,
they rush along in a storm.
The fresh air is pleasant,
short rain showers pass by.
–
I walk along the streets, wrapped in a dark coat,
under swaying trees.
Fog covered the world in the morning,
now the wind is driving away worries.
NOVEMBER GLASS
Milky light
fills the streets.
Grey days
without shadows.
–
Still and cool
is the air
over the city,
November glass.
–
Yellowish pale
the sky glows
at night
over the houses.
–
No moon, no stars,
silently
the twilight
encases all thoughts.
GORSE AND HEATH
Gorse and heather
line our path,
between junipers
and grey rocks
the path
meanders along.
–
How much further do we
still have to go?
Twilight is already falling
over us,
clouds herald
wind and rain.
–
Is there a refuge
waiting for us
at the end of the road?
A warm fire
in the fireplace that drives away
darkness and cold?
–
Together we walk
in the waning light
the path between
heather and gorse,
holding on,
so that we do not lose each other.
CLOUDS MOVE
Clouds move,
waves break,
on cliffs, on beaches.
–
Wisps of mist drift in the wind,
salty air.
–
Lights streaming,
storms howl,
over dunes, over meadows.
–
People bent over in the rain,
shadowy.
More autumn poems:
These autumn poems are translations from my German poetry collections ‘Januarstrand’ and ‘Gekritzel auf meiner Haut’, which you can purchase in bookstores and online.