Once it was the colour of
Soaked my table the uglier side of a
With a capsized field where a school sat
And a black and white patch of girls grew playing;
The gentle seaslides of saying I must
That all the charmingly drowned arise to cockcrow and kill.
When I whistled with mitching boys through a reservoir
Where at night we stoned the cold and
Lovers in the dirt of their leafy beds,
The shade of their trees was a word of many
And a lamp of lightning for the poor in the dark;
Now my saying shall be my undoing,
And every stone I wind off like a reel.
