20 NOVEMBER 1993, Page 47

The Ginko and the Sycamore

The autumn leaf that's falling through your mind Has fallen through a million minds before, And will fall on through countless millions more, Like countless million others of its kind The gingko here, and there the sycamore Eternally free-falling, unconfined By any web of human thought designed To make it fall more freely than before. Why then the wish to endlessly unwind One's own small skein of thought, to put before A world that does not need one poem more? Why must the failure bve once more defined? Why add another sentence to the score? — Go ask the forest what the leaves are for. Jonathan Steffen