✨ Autumn Begins

little by little...

Autumn Begins

Autumn begins unnoticed. Nights slowly lengthen,
and little by little, clear winds turn colder and colder,

summer’s blaze giving way. My thatch hut grows still.
At the bottom stair, in bunchgrass, lit dew shimmers.

—Meng Chiao, trans. David Hinton

From Classical Chinese Poetry, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Copyright © 2010. Used by permission of the translator. Photo by Jerry Wang, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.