Falling Leaves and Early Snow

By Kenneth Rexroth 1905–1982 Kenneth Rexroth

In the years to come they will say,

“They fell like the leaves

In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”

November has come to the forest,

To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.

The year fades with the white frost

On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,

Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.

Ice forms in the shadows;

Disheveled maples hang over the water;

Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.

Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.

The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,

The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,

The olive, velvety alder leaves,

The scarlet dogwood leaves,

Most poignant of all.

In the afternoon thin blades of cloud

Move over the mountains;

The storm clouds follow them;

Fine rain falls without wind.

The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.

When the rain pauses the clouds

Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.

In the evening the wind changes;

Snow falls in the sunset.

We stand in the snowy twilight

And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.

Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,

Glimmering with floating snow.

An owl cries in the sifting darkness.

The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

Kenneth Rexroth, "Falling Leaves and Early Snow" from The Collected Shorter Poems. Copyright © 1940 by Kenneth Rexroth. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Source: The Collected Shorter Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2003)

Biography

Kenneth Rexroth was born in South Bend, Indiana and frequently moved around the Midwest during his childhood. He led a tumultuous life that included being orphaned at 14, constant traveling both in the US and abroad, intense political activism, and four marriages. Largely self-educated, he is one of the most well-read poets of the twentieth century. His poems, which influenced Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence . . .

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