You can hear the leaves thinking – autumn in London

Autumn in London is poetry… it is as if the soul was walking through smoke and cinnamon. The leaves learn that even a change in colours gets the attention of photographers. If a poet were asked to describe London during autumn, he will surely talk about air turning to amber and the sky wearing its grey like an old, beloved coat. In London, autumn is not just a season – it’s a shift in soul. Chimneys breathe, leaves mutter underfoot, and the city – so often in haste – slows to admire its own reflection in puddles. The melancholy beauty of change clings to stone and tree alike, and for a few fleeting weeks, time feels soft and half-lit. Zadie Smith writes that the London autumn “doesn’t fall – it seeps in. Through cracked windows and morning fog, it winds around you, and suddenly, your thoughts are quieter, your hands are colder, and everything tastes like memory.”

I remember looking down from a small bridge inside a park in Becton during a walk and watching amber coloured leaves posing with the reflection of a grey and blue sky with expressive and eager clouds all around. It looked like the leaf, even though it had left its tree forever, was happier to be finally kissing the sky and embracing the clouds… and that even I wrote a poem on this thought…

Some days when the stillness stays
And reflections whisper what is
A lonesome brown leaf softly says:
I can touch the sky and kiss.

The entire city of London is like a “slow burn. Not the flames of summer or the frost of winter, but a kind of smouldering sadness that feels oddly like comfort,” wrote Tessa Hadley in “Late in the Day”. Even Ali Smith writes that “in the city’s parks, the trees stood like old poets, shedding their metaphors in gold and rust.” We found every little park and trail in the city of London turned into one massive metaphor about the magic of this season. Which means that though summers are the months when most tourists come to London, autumn is just as fine… and so is winter, as we discovered in another few weeks. That was in 2019. This year (2025) we are here during spring and the start of summer and the city is surprisingly intoxicating.

Coming back to autumn in London, and all the poetry that it inspires… there is another form of spoken word that many love – the words of a Stand-up comic. Imagine my surprise when I came across one brilliant comic who said: “Autumn in London is just the city’s way of saying, ‘You thought you liked rain? Here’s some wind with that.’ And the leaves? They don’t fall—they give up. Just like the rest of us when the sun disappears for six months.” Well, every perspective has a right to exist, doesn’t it? After all, there are those who love the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher and those who think she set the foundation of a long period of decay of pragmatic economic thinking.

There are, of course, many ways of interpreting autumn in London. I find it poetic, a stand-up finds it funny, Maggie might have found it dull and dry, Kamila Shamsie, a British-Pakistani novelist, offers a poetic glimpse into London’s autumnal atmosphere in her novel ‘Broken Verses’: “My ex calls the ochre winter ‘autumn’ as we queue to hear dock boys play jazz fugues in velvet dark.” This line paints a vivid picture of London’s autumn, blending the city’s cultural vibrancy with the season’s muted hues. Amit Chaudhuri, an Indian novelist and critic, delves into the introspective experience of an Indian student navigating London’s autumn in his novel ‘Odysseus Abroad’: “Gray London teaches him to cherish light.” This reflection underscores how London’s subdued autumnal light can lead to a deeper appreciation of brightness and clarity. All I know is that the poet as well the photographer in me was fascinated by autumn in London.
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Arvind Passey
Uploaded on 29 April 2025
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