"To ... something else" is an antithetical translation of Keat's poem "To Autumn," which is part of a longer collection re-examining the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne through a modern-day lens.
To … something else
Decondition of clearness and /// jarring ///
barrenness.
Conspiring with her how to damn
the space around ( ) dead leaves ( ),
to straighten with bananas
those plain house bulbs
& empty all fruit of immaturity.
To shrink the shell, and slim
the interior [without a dark edge],
and a more unready adult
and still less…
Younger
trees
for the
insects,
until they suspect cold ___ will always per cyst
for autumn has voided their warm-hearted caverns.
WHO HAS RARELY CAUGHT ME OUT OF YOUR DEBT?
Whoever doesn’t look may not always lose.
You standing alert —
your skin pressed down by the pre-selected rain.
OR, on a fully-wasted straight line wide awake.
Vigilant with the absence of poppies, while you
squander the final vast space.
But, none of these untwisted branches
And often, you do not remain wobbly
with your unburdened feet / across a ditch /
Or away from a cyder-press, an impatient scowl.
You ignore the closings – minute – bye – minute.
Where are the silences of autumn?
NO, WHERE ARE THEY?
Don’t think about them, you have
your silence, also.
Meanwhile allowable clouds
decay the hard-living week.
And avoid the barren sky.
Then in a joyous ensemble the giant beings
celebrate *separate from the land stones, miscarried below*,
or floating as the dark rain breaks or breathes.
And so, newly born humans quietly whisper from flat methods.
Portal injuries cry, and later, with throaty lightness!
The blue backbone hisses
from an open landscape
and dispersing creatures
sob in limbo.
Nikki Dudley is managing editor of streetcake magazine and also runs the streetcake writing prize and MumWrite. She has a chapbook and collection with KFS, with another forthcoming in the near future. She is the winner of the Virginia Prize 2020, and her second novel will be published in 2021. Her website is nikkidudleywriter.com, or you can find her on Twitter: @nikkidudley20.