November

NOVEMBER'S days are thirty:November's earth is dirty,Those thirty days, from first to last;And the prettiest things on ground are the pathsWith morning and evening hobnails dinted,With foot and wing-tip overprintedOr separately charactered,Of little beast and little bird.The fields are mashed by sheep, the roadsMake the worst going, the best the woodsWhere dead leaves upward and downward scatter.Few care for the mixture of earth and water,Twig, leaf, flint, thorn,Straw, feather, all that men scorn,Pounded up and sodden by flood,Condemned as mud.

But of all the months when earth is greenerNot one has clean skies that are cleaner.Clean and clear and sweet and cold,They shine above the earth so old,While the after-tempest cloudSails over in silence though winds are loud,Till the full moon in the eastLooks at the planet in the westAnd earth is silent as it is black,Yet not unhappy for its lack.Up from the dirty earth men stare:One imagines a refuge thereAbove the mud, in the pure brightOf the cloudless heavenly light:Another loves earth and November more dearlyBecause without them, he sees clearly,The sky would be nothing more to his eyeThan he, in any case, is to the sky;He loves even the mud whose dyesRenounce all brightness to the skies.