The old men rake the yards for winter <br />Burning the autumn-fallen leaves. <br />They have no lives, the one or the other. <br />The leaves are dead, the old men live <br />Only a little, light as a leaf, <br />Left to themselves of all their loves: <br />Light in the head most often too. <br />Raking the leaves, raking the lives, <br />Raking life and leaf together, <br />The old men smell of burning leaves <br />But which is which they wonder &mdash whether <br />Anyone tells the leaves and loves &mdash <br />Anyone left, that is, who lives.<br /><br />Archibald MacLeish<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-men-in-the-leaf-smoke/
