August by Louis MacNeice

August

 The shutter of time darkening ceaselessly
 Has whisked away the foam of may and elder
And I realise how now, as every year before,
Once again  the gay months have eluded me.

 For the mind, by nature stagey, welds its frame
 Tomb-like around each little world of a day;
 We jump from picture to picture and cannot follow
The living curve that is breathlessly the same.

While the lawn-mower sings moving up and down
Spirting its little fountain of vivid green,
 I, like Poussin*, make a still-bound fête of us
Suspending every noise, of insect or machine.

 Garlands at a set angle that do not slip,
Theatrically (and as if for ever) grace
 You and me and the stone god in the garden
 And Time who also is shown with a stone face.

 But all this is a dilettante’s** lie,
 Time’s face is not stone nor still his wings;
Our mind, being dead, wishes to have time die,
 For we, being ghosts, cannot catch hold of things.

 Louis MacNeice

*a landscape painter
** somebody with a pretentious and superficial appreciation of art