Lightness in Autumn

By Robert Fitzgerald 1910–1985 Robert Fitzgerald

The rake is like a wand or fan,

With bamboo springing in a span

To catch the leaves that I amass

In bushels on the evening grass.

I reckon how the wind behaves

And rake them lightly into waves

And rake the waves upon a pile,

Then stop my raking for a while.

The sun is down, the air is blue,

And soon the fingers will be, too,

But there are children to appease

With ducking in those leafy seas.

So loudly rummaging their bed

On the dry billows of the dead,

They are not warned at four and three

Of natural mortality.

Before their supper they require

A dragon field of yellow fire

To light and toast them in the gloom.

So much for old earth’s ashen doom.

Source: Spring Shade: Poems 1931-1970 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1971)

Biography

Robert Fitzgerald (1910 - 1985) was born in Springfield, Illinois, and attended Harvard University, where he received an excellent education in the classics. After college, he started to translate Greek poetry to keep up his skills. They were published and soon earned him the reputation as one of the best Greek translators in English. Though more known for his translations, Fitzgerald is also a poet in his own right. In poems . . .

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