End of Summer       by Stanley Kunitz

 

 

An agitation of the air, 

A perturbation of the light

Admonished me the unloved year

Would turn on its hinge that night.

 

I stood in the disenchanted field

Amid the stubble and the stones,

Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me

The song of my marrow-bones.

 

Blue poured into summer blue,

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,

The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew

That part of my life was over.

 

Already the iron door of the north

Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows

Order their populations forth,

And a cruel wind blows.

 

 

The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz ( W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2002 )  

 

Stanley Kunitz, one of my favorite poets, also wrote The Layers, in my top ten

of favorite poems.