FALLPOCOLYPSE!!!

(for best effect read aloud in a forest at dusk)

When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

Are any of you at precisely this point in fall where you are? This sonnet could not have come at a better time for me. The leaves are just on the brink of nudity. Personally, I'm excited to see what comes next, but the narrator is a bit more conservative. He takes trees showing full frontal as a sign of the apocalypse.

Fall doesn't have to be apocalyptic. If everything went as it should in summer, the shift to fall is largely unconscious. But here, something that was supposed to happen failed to happen. Beauty failed to replant itself. Now all the signs of fall become signs of the immanent end.

I love this poem for exactly the reason I hate LA. I like experiencing the passage of time. In LA, leaves don't fall, diets don't change, people don't age. In such a place, it's extremely easy to worship the present. But the narrator does experience the passage of time, and this leads him to question the reality of the temporal. Once you start doubting the temporal, you are forced to start questioning the nature of the eternal.

I've been thinking a lot about our culture's refusal to face death recently. Here's a great essay on the subject I just read:
http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1995_death_undefeated.pdf

Has anyone else ever used a scythe? If you haven't, I HIGHLY recommend it. It feels so unbelievably good.

How much better would this sonnet be if we just chopped out the "save breed" part? I've come to really hate the way he makes everything about having kids.

Did this poem remind anyone else of Amos 8:
"This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. “What do you see, Amos?” he asked. “A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered. Then the LORD said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer. “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”