Autumn 7 - The Sixth Sense

Instinctive  Autumn

 

 

 

 

In Autumn’s warmth, it's possible to live,

Imagining that summer's lingering days

Have just begun; that we in fact can give

Ourselves to pleasure's thrall and carefree ways.

 

Yet deep inside, we know this cannot be;

We are aware of Nature's override,

Of seasons' rythmic regularity;

Though sun may shine and birds may sing beside.

Yet not through sight or sound or touch or smell

Are we informed of Winter's imminence

But through a hidden voice; that we know well

Though veiled, concealed, mysterious, called ‘sixth sense’.

 

The sense whose mystic properties reveal

The facts the other five confuse, conceal.

                                                                                                                                                John Berry

Reviews

[R J Askew]

I've just read Alfresco Toilette and it is still bossing my mind. I prefer Alfresco to this one because of its more specific focus on the girl and I found it more dramatic in the little story it spun. I half studied the rhyme schemes of them both but found myself focusing on the content. I must be looking at the poems' payloads rather than the way they deliver it. I've just had another look at this one and wonder to myself, 'Is my own sixth sense not that well developed?' Is that why the other poem wins over this one for me at least. I am drawn more by the flame of hair far more than the notion of a sixth sense. Also the visual in the other poem just appeals to me more as I prefer a human face to a landscape.

[Emily Rose]

A sonnet! The most structured of the group. Now I understand why you set up the "Tastes of Autumn" as you did - it helps us transition from the deep free verse into the deep structure. (Aaack. I do not mean "deep structure" in the literary criticism sense! If you don't know what I'm talking about, ignore my babbling.)

This, I think, is the most philosophical of those that I've read so far, and rightfully so since it deals with a sixth sense. I get a more forlorn tone from this than I did from any of the others - it seems that in this poem you're looking at autumn more as a herald to winter, and thus death, than in the context of autumn, winter, spring. It hints at some deep truth that we're aware of only vaguely, through our "sixth sense" but that we, perhaps, push to the side so we don't have to think about it.

One grammatical issue: Should there be an apostrophe in "pleasures," making it "pleasure's thrall?" It seems to make more sense to me that way.

This is quite profound and it leaves me hungering for the conclusion (although I'm still wondering what happened to the missing second or third poem!)