<FONT >Autumn Refrain
The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of sun, too, gone... the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never—shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skrittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never—shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.
This is a poem in which it seems to me that it's very difficult to determine precisely what is being said, because of certain ambiguities. A "residuum" of the "skreak and skritter of evening" "grates" "these evasions of the nightingale" (whose "nameless air" the poet "has never—shall never hear"), and the "stillness" ("everything gone, and being still") under which the residuum "resides" is "in the key of that desolate sound."</FONT f>
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