Classic Poem

On this breezy October morn, I walk
in the swift shadows of cloud-cursing rooks,
watching the world wake on the horizon.

In the brush I hear the tangerine talk
of blackbirds, and, in a crumbling wall's nooks,
the tumult of thrushes halving a bun.

And I see the first cart of dawn turning
the corner, see its owner's toothless grin
amid a pile of leaves lit by the sun.

And I smell the scent of something burning,
of something smouldering deep within,
fouler than all the hills of Polish dung.

Thirty-five years have transformed my life's leaves
into an outcast's smoke upon the breeze.