Winter rondeau
Him
O let us go! For summer seems
already come and golden beams
warm leafless banks although they're bare;
wild honey seems to scent the air
and ghostly mayflies haunt the streams.
Her
I catch your words and eye which gleams
and tells me that it ill beseems
and yet the sunny banks are fair.
O let us go!
Him
We have surpassed the wanton themes
that jealous muses bring to dreams
with ravishments beyond compare.
Her
But now I am in disrepair
and O how cold the weather seems.
O let us go!
November
November, summer’s cooling ember,
is a death: you cannot blow
into its heart and make it
glow.
November days, in summer’s
ashes,
dressed in gold and russet
splashes,
strip their clothes, show every
member
naked in the blinding, low,
unwarming sun or else they
blow
with rougher winds than we
remember;
leaves and flowers, down they
go;
the dark is here; there will be
snow.
The spring will come; I know, I
know.
and yet there is no switch to
throw
to make November burn and
so
we coldly go into December.
Sapphic Stanza
A summer’s day I asked you in
your garden,
on the sunken lawn bordered
by roses,
if we could come together as
before;
that summer never fades.
©Roy Ernest Ballard 2013
