The leaves, though little time they have to live, Were never so unfallen as today, And seem to yield us through a rustled sieve The very light from which time fell away.
A showered fire we thought forever lost Redeems the air. Where friends in passing meet, They parley in the tongues of Pentecost. Gold ranks of temples flank the dazzled street.
It is a light of maples, and will go; But not before it washes eye and brain With such a tincture, such a sanguine glow As cannot fail to leave a lasting stain.
So Mary’s laundered mantle (in the tale Which, like all pretty tales, may still be true), Spread on the rosemary-bush, so drenched the pale Slight blooms in its irradiated hue,
They could not choose but to return in blue.
I’ve never seen Portland, Connecticut, in the autumn. Whenever I find myself at home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at this time, I pine for the customary autumn hues that Portland must have. Fortunately, a poem by Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) is ready to supply me with a colorful autumn tableau in “October Maples, Portland.”Despite the fact that he was poet laureate from 1987 to 1988, I doubt whether most people recognize his name. He died only a few years ago in 2017 after a lengthy career in writing that started with the publication of his first poem at the age of 8.
I love Richard Wilbur for many reasons: He was a modern Christian poet who wrote formal verse; he wrote one of my favorite essays on poetry; and, most of all, he had the ability to craft a poem with a spiritually infused worldview in graceful, unobtrusive language.
His words are carefully chosen, often containing double meanings and revealing the jocundity of the poet. Published in a collection of poems in 1961, “October Maples, Portland” explores the effect of beauty on the soul by delving into a singular, silent, and vibrant scene that strikes the speaker with wonderment and leaves him irrevocably altered. In so doing, Wilbur demonstrates how the present moment can have a sacramental quality, saturating our minds with its beauty.
Unfallen Leaves
The religious language of the poem paints the season as almost sacred. In describing the leaves as “unfallen,” Wilbur immediately diverges from our expectations for an autumnal poem. Rather than talking about the falling leaves, Wilbur sets the leaves as a parallel to humanity as they are redeemed from their fall. As it falls through the sieve of foliage, the light seemingly assumes an immortality; the leaves seem more brilliant in their tincture than ever before, even while the fiery colors signal their decay.The stanzas alternate in their focus on the nature scene and humanity, which is fitting as the two play upon each other. Those who behold the nature scene are profoundly affected by it, so much so that their very language is altered. The conversations in the chance encounters of friends are conducted in an entirely new language; the words are reactions to their surroundings. In the receptivity of these witnesses to the scene, the groves become temples lining the streets.
This autumnal light will eventually fade, Wilbur reminds us, but not without leaving a lasting tinge of color upon the eye and mind. We cannot but see differently, for as we are confronted with this ethereal beauty, we now are aware of the existence of such earthly glory. We remember it, we search for it, and we will never again be as we were before encountering it.
“Sanguine” describes the red hue of the leaves, but the particular word used to describe the shade of red also calls to mind the blood of Christ which left humanity forever altered. With the words “lasting stain,” Wilbur describes the effect of the scene’s beauty as being like an indelible mark on the soul, left by an event that paradoxically both purifies and stains.
To further illustrate this idea, Wilbur references a legend which held that on the flight into Egypt, the Virgin Mary stopped to rest and spread her mantle over a rosemary bush. As she did so, the white blossoms took on the color of the mantle and were stained irrevocably blue. Likewise, anyone beholding the Portland maples is forever touched by their sanguine glow, an almost spiritual mark.
Indelible Marks
Poet and theologian David Franks, in speaking of the poem, notes that, “To come to be without stain, we must be stained with a red that whitens. ... The intimacy of first love only really arrives at the end.”Just so, the poem is paradoxical in several respects: The mind is washed by being stained, and the season, which is most emblematic of death, radiates life and renewal.
Fire, which ought to be destructive, is life-giving. I read recently that wildfires, counterintuitively, are essential to the thriving of trees in many sites in western North America. Seeing the maples set all afire (metaphorically, of course), our souls absorb the sight, which is seared across them and are fortified by it. We ourselves, scorched by beauty’s sanguine glow, experience further growth.
As linguist Helen Dry points out, the poem uses the events of Pentecost and the flight into Egypt as examples of scenes that “purify and consecrate the ordinary.” The transformation of an ordinary Portland street into “gold ranks of temples,” bears a similarity with the change of those gathered on Pentecost.
The visible sign of the tongues of flame was transitory; the physical proof of the apostles’ spiritual renewal did not remain. So, too, Wilbur acknowledges in the third stanza that the light he describes is only “a light of maples, and will go,” but the autumnal splendor works like the extraordinary miracle of Pentecost. The witnesses of the scene are set on a mission as apostles of beauty.
In our encounters with beauty, not only do we experience the enduring effect upon our souls, but our every thought and act afterwards is a response to that event. Wilbur shows that the effect of this beauty upon one person spreads like wildfire to others.
In the light of a beautiful autumnal instant, one is sealed with the golden light, and diffuses that light in every encounter thereafter.
