"I Love to See When Leaves Depart..."

 "I LOVE TO SEE WHEN LEAVES DEPART......."   by Royston Dunnachie Campbell (1901-1957) South African poet (poem also known as "Autumn")

 I love to see, when leaves depart, the clear anatomy arrive,

 Winter , the paragon of art,

 That kills all forms of life and feeling

 Save what is pure and will survive.

 Already now the clanging chains

 Of geese are harnessed  to the moon;

 Stripped are the great sun-clouding planes:

 And the dark pines, their own revealing, let in needles of the moon.

 Strained by the gale the olives whiten

 Like hoary wrestlers bent with toil

 And with the vines, their branches lighten

 To brim our vats where summer lingers

 In the red froth and sun-gold oil.

 Soon on our hearth's reviving pyre

 Their rotted stems ...............

          will crumble up;   

               And like a ruby.....     

              Painting fire        

          The grape will redden on your fingers, through the lit crystal of the cup.

 Photographs 2018  Poem taken from "A Treasury of Great Poems selected by Louis Untermeyer. New York, Simon and Schuster 1942"