Desert Island Poems: 'September 2' by Wendell Berry

Andrew's exploration of this classic autumnal poem by Wendell Berry.

September 2

In the evening there were flocks of nighthawks

passing southward over the valley.  The tall

sunflowers stood, burning on their stalks

to cold seed, by the still river.  And high

up the birds rose into sight against the darkening

clouds.  They tossed themselves among the fading

landscapes of the sky like rags, as in

abandonment to the summons their blood knew.

And in my mind, where had stood a garden

straining to the light, there grew

an acceptance of decline.  Having worked,

I would sleep, my leaves all dissolved in flight.

Introduction

There is something so appealing about the simplicity and clarity in Wendell Berry’s poetry, and, first published in Poetry Magazine in America in May 1970, this is a perfect example of the farmer-poet at his clarified best. It’s also a poem about autumn which evokes its atmosphere so magically, yet doesn’t use the word ‘autumn’ once and for that reason alone is praiseworthy. 

Almost a Sonnet

I want to start with the form of the poem, first. I can’t help but feel that every poet who writes a 12 line poem has either done so almost reluctantly (only two lines away from a sonnet) or done so because they want to remain two lines away from a sonnet, and therefore avoid the poem being lumped in with that genre and therefore being read as part of that tradition. It always makes me curious to know, though, why poets stop two lines short of a sonnet, and, I suppose, sometimes the reason for this is simply because, well, they wanted to, or, more importantly, the poem was telling them to end at 12 lines. Whatever is the case, this is a great example of a twelve-liner (which I feel deserves its own name and category) and you feel like anything beyond ‘dissolved in flight’ would weaken and dilute that final image. 

Opening Image

That opening image of the nighthawks is so simple yet so alive; the plain speaking of it invites the reader in. It sets the tone immediately of a poem that is looking you in the eye and speaking to you directly without pretence of trickery. Believe it or not, this is a very brave move from the point of the poet. So many poets feel the urge or temptation to overwrite or go overboard or trip over their own syntax in the opening line, but Berry here shows his confidence by allowing the image to speak for itself. I can’t also help but feel that Berry, a poet of the country, is reclaiming the word nighthawk from Edward Hopper and his famous painting of the disparate group of strangers in the late-night coffee bar. Here the nighthawks are the actual birds, and instead of being cooped up in an urban environment being stared at like goldfish in a bowl, are free. The risk that Berry takes in such poems as this one, is that when we look behind the simple language we find nothing more than what is there. Robert Frost, another farmer-poet, was the master of concealing complex ideas and ambiguity in simple writing, but Berry manages to walk the line in this poem. 

Enjambment

I’m interested by the enjambment in this poem. There were a couple of occasions where, upon first reading, I wondered if the line endings were too clunky and sputtered from one to the other, but I think Berry manages to pull it off. For example, ‘The tall/ sunflowers stood’ works because it’s almost as if we’re having to climb over it, or raise our eyes to the top of it. Another pretty audacious line break – and another one concerned with height – comes with ‘And high/ up the birds rose…’ Again it seems here like Berry is using the line break to signal an upward glance, a reaching for something higher and beyond, which is ironic considering we are reading down the page. This contrast of reading down the page from line to the other, and yet ascending is skyward is a dramatic and effective contrast. When we get to ‘fading/ landscapes’ the tone is more melancholic and weary, and indeed the enjambment is crucial in effecting the breathlessness and loss of energy and increasing lethargy which is enacted gradually as we read on through the poem. So, we can say, then, that the enjambment plays more than a superficial part in the poem - it’s central in capturing Berry’s sense of exhaustion and acceptance.

The Turning Point

…They tossed themselves among the fading

landscapes of the sky like rags, as in

abandonment to the summons their blood knew.

While this isn’t a sonnet, and so technically can’t have a volta or turn in the strict sense, I’d argue that Berry achieves one in these three lines (and what a magnificent three lines these are!). In these three lines we move from a concrete world to an abstract one; we move from the image of the birds to the notion of abandonment. We move from a limited third person point of view, to an omniscient one which shows an understanding of the more abstract understanding of the bird’s purpose. 

Another Turning Point

Just when we think the poem has turned, it turns again, and this time the poet enters and we have the strong possessive determiner of ‘my mind’. In this one line we go from the almost epic sky and boundless landscape to the comparably small yet abstract limits of the speaker’s mind.

Metaphor of the Garden

The poem hinges on this metaphor for the garden near the end. The speaker’s mind had once been strong and positive and hopeful to the point of ‘straining to the light’ but had now faced that the best days were over and now faced an ‘acceptance of decline’ which ‘grew’. The metaphor of the garden fits in perfectly with the poem’s thematic domain of nature, landscape, life and death. Again, he comes back with his use of conceptual more abstract language with ‘acceptance of decline’ which really just means ‘death’, but he renders the euphemistic phrasing of ‘acceptance of decline’ so beautifully and rhythmically that is just works.

The Final Image

The final image of the poem, unusually, sees Berry use a comma at the end of the penultimate line, which is the first time he takes such a measure throughout the whole poem. It’s almost as if the speaker is really running out of breath at this point, and the comma reinforces the weight of the pause between lines. However, there’s no mistaking that this is a poem about mortality, the transience and beauty of life, the passage of time, the interplay of breath and breathlessness. The final image of sleep recalls Robert Frost with his ‘miles to go before I sleep’ or the ‘human sleep’ at the end of ‘After Apple Picking’. Either way there is something kind surreal about the dissolving leaves, and the metaphor of the speaker being a tree. Indeed, it’s at this point we realise that the whole poem could be read as spoken from the point of view as a tree. ‘Having worked’ and ‘I would sleep’ suggests that this is the tree going to sleep having produced the leaves over the spring and through summer. But it’s also a metaphor for human life, and the work that one does during their life, and how at the end one’s ‘leaves’ or breath or memories as we may interpret the metaphor will dissolve. There’s a poignancy, a melancholy yet complexity to how Berry handles this metaphor, which makes this one of the truly great, truly beautiful and truly memorable autumn poems.