January brings the snow,
makes our feet and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.
March brings breezes loud and shrill,
stirs the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
......
YOU, AND YELLOW AIR by John Shaw Neilson
I dream of an old kissing-time
And the flowered follies there;
In the dim place of cherry-trees,
Of you, and yellow air.
It was an age of babbling,
When the players would play
Mad with the wine and miracles
Of a charmed holiday.
......
Came a bouquet from the city,
Fragrant, rich and debonair -
Sweet carnation and geraniium,
Heliotrope and roses rare.
Down beside the crystal river,
Where the moss-grown rocks are high,
And the ferns, from niche and crevice,
Stretch to greet the azure sky;
......
The green elm with the one great bough of gold
Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, --
The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white,
Harebell and scabious and tormentil,
That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun,
Bow down to; and the wind travels too light
To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern;
The gossamers wander at their own will.
At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.
The rich scene has grown fresh again and new
......
A crazy man that found a cup,
When all but dead of thirst,
Hardly dared to wet his mouth
Imagining, moon-accursed,
That another mouthful
And his beating heart would burst.
October last I found it too
But found it dry as bone,
And for that reason am I crazed
And my sleep is gone.
......
Crisp and chilly air pumpkins of the month
Greet the varied Halloween
No weird but a feast day on the soul's hunt
Celebrating the soul's kin
Autumnal dew smoke stirs up the night lien
©Mahtab Bangalee
October 18, 2023
Chattogram
......
The smell of humidor
Charmed the old house and
Frightened me as I ascended the
Narrow stairwell that gentle
October morning.
The song of autumn was playing
Low, and with astute grace.
Silent, the royal smell wafted between Cuba
And Denmark,
Across fat rank grass of fecund roots.
......
Time changes with life and life changes with time.
October grows too old,
Hobbling backwards
With the burden of years,
On the sinuous alcove of time,
Tenebrous and feathery,
Her hidden lamps blinking furiously
At the silhouettes of wasted days.
The wasted leaves of autumn
Break forth and dance down
......
In the hour when senile summer breathes her last,
The vim of her ego births a somnolent child.
Rising forth from the yawning pit of newness,
Dyed with shades of seasonal confetti,
Fall rises with a spectrumed diadem.
October reigns with a high degree of splendour,
Braiding strands of leaves with threads of gold.
There! See the line of lights,
A chain of stars down either side the street --
Why can't you lift the chain and give it to me,
A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round
And you could play with it. You smile at me
As though I were a little dreamy child
Behind whose eyes the fairies live. . . . And see,
The people on the street look up at us
All envious. We are a king and queen,
Our royal carriage is a motor bus,
......