18 OCTOBER 1986, Page 34

Autumn

Let me read again the autumn newspapers. There are no accidents, no disasters, only a natural failure of the green.

No individual sorrows, only general losing their imperium and their crowns, an emptying of a house towards the sun.

Window on window slowly closing, hedges perpetuated in frost, the wires that trill with a remembered tune.

The animals are seeking temporary graves that later burst in foliage, in the tears that spring will fashion from the art of frost.

lain Crichton Smith