Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows, And all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone. I already hear the dead thuds of logs below Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn. All of winter will return to me: derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice, And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison, My soul will harden into a block of red ice. I shiver as I listen to each log crash and slam: The echoes are as dull as executioners' drums. My mind is like a tower that slowly succumbs To the blows of a relentless battering ram. It seems to me, swaying to these shocks, that someone Is nailing down a coffin in a hurry somewhere. For whom? -- It was summer yesterday; now it's autumn. Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.