In Autumn or in Spring
Nothing remains, and yet everything
Does – and this is the truth
Of all the constant vanishing
And continuance. Both are
And are not. The finished leaves
That moulder under the rain
Are fresh on the trees, and those
New green on the boughs
Rot in brown and blackening earth.
And we too are caught in these
Blown and sinking mounds, in the colours
To come – or if not caught, freed
In this conjunction of being
And non-existence. It is here in this
Impossible moment, place, that
I am and you are and we are loved
Wholly – loved with all who have been or
Will be. And so little means to know it.
For this is what is endlessly created
And destroyed, and in this flux
Is constant. Not ourselves – we are neither
Real nor unreal, except that love
Makes and unmakes us, forms the one
And the other, sets us in the warm
And bitter air, where we grow
Together with these fixed and waving
Branches, without season, without end.
Harold Jones