AUTUMNAL

October: the falling leaves resume the earth,
recording time upon the sodden floor;
All energies and foreign heats retract

And luminous at night, the mold
Decays. It is a timely paradox
To be considered by who works in stone.

Fading the flesh delineates the bone,
Indicts your face, a precious artifact,
That so your legal beauty may be known.

Mortal and inconclusive every fall
By repetition further unredeemed
Tears at the rotting fabric of this world

And falls away: in the destructive hour
False permanence of stone can speculate
In splendid light, illumination and

Reconnaissance of always failing time.
How should we be the emblem of our tomb?
Always we fail with time to fall: and yet

Love might construct a form so true, so tense
As to survive its own antithesis,
Achieving an ironic permanence

With, for a pulse, repetitive despair.
Fading, the flesh delineates the bone
As surely, certainly, as autumn leaves

Describe a tree when they resume the earth.
Then do not fear your beauty will be known
Only by fever, attempted by decay:

Love is the form of stone, statue and law
As far locked from corruption of the sun
As Buddha smiling in the seamless rock.

...for my wife