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✦ 124 ✦ Indian Summer The leaves of the currants are textile and tickling. There’s laughter indoors and a glass cannonade, They’re slicing and dowsing with pepper and pickling, And putting in cloves for a tart marinade. The forest in mockery scatters the sound Far down a steep slope and over the plain, Where sun-burnished hazels are red all around, As if they were seared in a campfire’s flame. A pathway leads down to a gully out there, And one is so sorry for dry, fallen trees, And raggedy autumn so bony and bare, Who sweeps all her leavings inside the ravine. And sorry the world is much simpler by far Than so many clever old thinkers pretend, And sorry the groves are as sad as they are, And sorry that everything comes to an end. Because it’s so pointless to stare at the ground, When all that’s before you is burning in air, And autumn’s white ashes are swirling all round And float through the window like spiderweb hair. The path from the garden cuts right through the fence And loses itself in a thicket of birch. There’s laughter indoors and a hubbub intense— And off in the woods—the same hubbub and mirth. ...

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