Once It Was The Colour Of Saying

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.