Poem In October

It was my thirtieth year to

Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning

With water praying and call of seagull and

And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That

In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy

And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.

High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the

Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a

Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,

Here were fond climates and sweet singers

Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow

In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling

And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the

Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall

Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My

Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe

And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red

And I saw in the turning so clearly a

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun

And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of

That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the

Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his

To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang

Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my

Away but the weather turned around.

And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my

Year to heaven stood there then in the summer

Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be

On this high hill in a year's turning.