Another flag of life, these flags like all our flags were dreaming
That they'd never fall but always wave hissing in the sun
But fall they will and then there's no more idle gleaming
In the lamp of gold and still October hardly yet begun
But already over. Now the clock falls back to hours from London
Where the black trees thresh, the dark city open to the ocean
And each day that passes stretches shadows where the sun's gone
Growing long these sunless spaces annual earthly motion
For another year, while leaves spin in the tumble drier of Autumn
Like a Catherine Wheel of banknotes made unreal by new exchange
What they were is past, this metamorphosis never taught them
No fate seemed stamped in Summer's green, so now in rags they range
Through the gutters and the chimneys under cars and under doorways,
And every moment brings another aeroplane landing
Down radar runs from North to South, all days and always
Into hinterlands of Heathrow where they spend an hour standing
With their engines hot from other places, other lands and peoples
With their own beliefs of God and souls and what is true,
And the planes fly over fields and houses, lovers, graves and steeples
On a single thread of theory through the angry grey and blue
And every day that passes brings the squirrels nearer sleeping,
Every day that passes brings us nearer dumbstruck snow,
Every beat that passes in our hearts our thoughts are keeping
But our destination never ever known
I was touched by leaves from the whirling-weathered afternoon boughs
I never knew love, but I know it now.