Autumn officially began on September 22. For some plants, the angle of the sun tells them what season it is. Others rely on the temperature. In any case, at this time of year, deciduous trees drop their leaves to prepare for winter.

The 2018 Fall Foliage Prediction Map at Smokymountains.com has a week-by-week interactive map showing regional peak colors for the United States. (See photo above, which is for October 8.) The web page also explains the science behind falling leaves and has downloadable coloring sheets for children.

When the time comes, trees cut off the flow of nutrients to leaves, which lose their chlorophyll, and beautiful underlying colors are revealed. (This season is typically called “fall” in the United States versus “autumn” in Britain for historical reasons.)

Years ago, I witnessed something that showed me the power of trees — not their strength but their autonomy.

The air could not have been more still that autumn morning, yet a tree near my back door was losing its leaves. One by one, they fell of their own weight as the tree let go. Leaves dropped steadily and eerily through the becalmed air.

Usually we think the wind sweeps the autumn leaves from the trees, and maybe it provides an extra tug. But trees decide to shed their leaves at the moment they deem best. Though they seem almost inert, buffeted by wind, soaked by rain, baked by sunshine, and parched by drought, they control their fates as much as any of us. We, too, can be uprooted by disasters, attacked by illness, cut down by predators, and suffer wilting thirst. Being mobile does not make us less vulnerable. Or more willful.

So on that cool morning, I watched a tree prove that it was the master of its destiny. One by one, it clipped its bonds to its leaves, and they dropped off. The tree was taking action, and no one and nothing could stop it.

Sunday, September 30, is International Translation Day. To celebrate, here are three poems I translated with Christian Law. “Twilight in Poley” is my favorite.

These poems are by Vicente Núñez (1926-2002), one of the most daring and important poets of Andalusia, Spain, in the 20th century. These translations will appear in a bilingual anthology of his work to be published later this year by the Vicente Núñez Foundation.

La Mentira
En la breve estancia
de una melodía,
la sospecha tuve
de que me mentía.

Como ya era tarde
y el ciprés gemía,
salí a la terraza
sola, oscura y fría.

Sonaron las doce…
La música hería
el último adagio.
Pero no venía.

Al besar el mármol
en la celosía
mudéjar el viento,
mentía, mentía.

The Lie

In the time that it took
for a song or a sigh,
I had the suspicion
he had told me a lie.

But by then it was late
and the cypresses whined.
On the balcony cold
and abandoned stood I.

“It’s midnight,” the bells tolled,
and the sad lullaby
reached its final strain.
But he did not arrive.

The wind brushed the marble
with a whispered reply
on old ornate carvings.
He did lie, he did lie.

 

A Santaella

Como en un mar de pájaros reales
tras la ventana de una antigua estrella,
sueña en su torre eterna Santaella,
canta, suspira y vaga en medievales

noches como rubíes. ¿De qué males
de amor se duele la gentil doncella
si ella es la bella porque sólo es Ella
junto a los muros de su casa, iguales

a quien sostiene ausencia y ronda y gime
sumiso al seno que en el Valle mora?
¿Qué llamarada te derrama en ala?

¿Qué vuela en ti, desnuda y alta, dime?
¿Donde me has puesto el corazón, señora?
Campo, capilla, esquila, cumbre, escala.

To Santaella [a village near Córdoba, Spain]

As if in a sea of birdsong, regal
flight through the window of an ancient star,
Santaella dreams in her eternal tower,
sings, sighs, and wanders in medieval

nights like rubies. Of what infirmity
of love does the gentle damsel sustain
if hers is beauty that can only reign
standing at the walls of her home as she

suffers along with song and laments there,
subject to her dwelling in the valley?
What impassioned flame spills you to take wing?

Tell me, what flies up in you, tall and bare?
Where have you put my heart, my lady?
Field, chapel, belfry, summit, quartering.

 

Ocaso en Poley

Si la tarde no altera la divina hermosura
de tus oscuros ojos fijos en el declive
de la luz que sucumbe. Si no empaña mi alma
la secreta delicia de tus rocas hundidas.
Si nadie nos advierte. Si en nosotros se apaga
toda estéril memoria que amengüe o que diluya
este amor que nos salva más allá de los astros,
no hablemos ya, bien mío. Y arrástrame hacia el hondo
corazón de tus brazos latiendo bajo el cielo.

Twilight in Poley

If evening has not touched the divine grace
of your dark eyes gazing at the fading
yielding light. If my soul has not sullied
your delightful solid sunken secret.
If no one has seen us. If we can quench
those sterile memories that might abate
this saving love from far beyond the stars,
now not a word, my love. Let your arms and
pulsing heart pull me deep beneath the sky.

I just read the novelette “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth” by Daryl Gregory, and I loved it. If you liked my novel Semiosis, you might like this story, too.

You can read it for free at the Tor.com site, or buy it for your e-reader for only 99¢. Purchase links are at the end of the story.

It tells what happens to a boy when seeds from outer space land on Earth. Are the seeds a disaster? How do they change people’s lives? How do they change the Earth? Why were they sent? None of the answers come easy for the boy in the story, and some of the answers might surprise you, especially in the last few paragraphs when he finally understands.

The year 1968 is getting some half-centennial fame these days. It’s being remembered, rightly, as a difficult time.

The Vietnam War was at its peak, Lyndon Baines Johnson announced he would not seek re-election, Martin Luther King was assassinated, the Black Panthers and Oakland police had a deadly shoot-out, students rioted in Paris, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, the Prague Spring was put down by an invasion, the Democratic National Convention was marked by riots, Richard Nixon won the presidential election — and, in rare good news, Apollo 8 made the first manned-flight orbits of the Moon.

I was thirteen years old.

Some of the unrest and technological change became reflected in the English language. Here are a few of the words and expressions that according to Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler 1968 page made their first appearances in print that year.

The expression gavel-to-gavel probably reflects coverage of the Democratic National Convention. The hippie counterculture had also reached a high point, with new expressions like love beads and peace sign. The Youth International Party also got its start, resulting in the word yippie. A related development was the new acronym SWAT, meaning a police Special Weapons And Tactics unit.

Meanwhile, NASA was busy with the Apollo missions and other space exploration. This gave rise to the words Earthrise, geosynchronous, and pulsar.

The computer mouse debuted in 1968. So did some new computer expressions: alt key, bit rate, word processing, and data mining.

Finally, the expression cash bar first appeared, although the activity it described probably existed before we had a name for it. I was too young to know.

I’ve been traveling.

This morning I was driving north on I-75 in Ohio. Going the other way was a convoy of cherry-picker cranes, the kind crews use to repair damaged electrical lines. I think they were being positioned for recovery efforts after Florence hits the East Coast.

On Tuesday morning I was in Michigan eating breakfast at a Best Western motel. I was up very early, and everyone else in the breakfast room was obviously a tradesman: construction site workers and truck drivers, strong men used to going from job to job and working with their hands.

Television screens on the walls played the CNN morning news, and when it ran a segment on Hurricane Florence, the room went silent and every man watched somberly. These men, or their friends and coworkers, might be called on to haul supplies and repair or rebuild the storm’s damage as their next job. They looked grim, not joyful, at the prospect of plentiful work. Those jobs would bring them face to face with loss and grief, and the future might be hard on their hearts as well as their hands.