Goldengrove Unleaving

 In my freshman year of college I fell madly in love with my English Poetry 101 professor and luckily for me it was completely unrequited. He was, after all, having an affair with his teaching assistant and he was already a lion in winter. For years, I had been writing poetry and reading poetry and loving it, but he gave me a gift by teaching it so beautifully and lovingly and powerfully. 

I remember reading Gerard Manley Hopkins poems for the first time in his class. I still have my original poetry anthology with notes scribbled in the margins.Hopkins never published a single thing when he was alive. He was a very private man. I am grateful to his friend who edited and published a volume of his work nearly 30 years after his death.  

Every autumn, very particularly those I have experienced in New Mexico, brings one of his poems to the forefront in my mind. The cottonwoods here have a tremendous burst of brightest golden yellow, so bright and glowing it almost hurts your eyes to look directly. They stay that way for just so long, until a cold snap, or hard rain, or when the wind rakes her fingers through the branches in one long thoughtless gesture.

 

I took a walk on some of my favorite trails here in Silver City – to witness goldengrove unleaving. I ended up, quite appropriately, at the cemeteries near the edge of town. The Catholics on one side of the road, the Masons on the other. And I thought – Even in death, we are separated by our differences.

Hopkins’ poem is re-printed without anyone’s permission below. I hope you enjoy.

Spring and Fall

     To a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! As the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for.

It is Margaret you mourn for.