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.

~ Wallace Stevens