November and the waning of the year

November Night

   by Adelaide Crapsey (1878 - 1914)

Listen...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

The poem's central image is formed by two elements: the falling leaves and the steps of the ghosts. As in many of Crapsey's poems, she juxtaposes something small and ordinary (such as the leaves) with something large and timeless (here, death). The leaves become a momento mori and the simile that connects them to ghostly footsteps intensifies this.

November Night is in the chinquapin form invented by Adelaide Crapsey.  A cinquain is a five-line poem in which the first line has two syllables; the second, four syllables; the third, six syllables; the fourth, eight syllables and the fifth, and final, line goes back to two syllables.

Adelaide Crapsey's poems (her entire poetic output, less than one hundred poem) often speak of death and dying. Diagnosed with fatal tuberculosis of the lining of the brain in 1911, she began writing cinquains in the same year. These poems reflect her knowledge of her own impending death. The form itself (the gradual increase of syllables from lines one to four, followed by the short final line) is a metaphor for the life of this young woman -- a brief life, cut short.

Crapsey was born and raised in New York. A graduate of Vassar,  she taught briefly until tuberculosis left her bedridden. In addition to her poems, she produced a study of metrics, praised for its clarity. She was 36 when she died.

Here's one more poem by Crapsey:

Release

     by Adelaide Crapsey

With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.

And lastly, another November cinquain by Adelaide Craipsey:

Niagara

     Seen on a Night in November

How frail, 
Above the bulk
Of crashing water hangs,
Autumnal, evanescent, wan,
The moon.