4691381European Elegies — AutumnWatson KirkconnellSirak Skitnik

15.AUTUMN


The wailing wind of autumn sobs in pain
By wet untrodden paths that thread the night;
In heavy eddyings its vapors smite
Strange swaths of gloom across the sodden plain.

Disconsolate and shadowless it rends
The ragged yellow garments of the trees,
Pausing in grief above each lifeless glade,
Helplessly savage over hope's decease. . .
Its writhing length upon the earth is laid,
And then once more in moaning it ascends.

By lonely paths among the haggard hills
It lays the pallid leaves in humid heaps;
Sleepless it wanders till its wailing fills
The world with clamor of a thousand deeps.


From the Bulgarian of Sirak Skitnik.