Once It Was The Colour Of Saying

Once it was the colour of saying

Soaked my table the uglier side of a hill

With a capsized field where a school sat still

And a black and white patch of girls grew playing；

The gentle seaslides of saying I must undo

That all the charmingly drowned arise to cockcrow and kill.

When I whistled with mitching boys through a reservoir park

Where at night we stoned the cold and cuckoo

Lovers in the dirt of their leafy beds，

The shade of their trees was a word of many shades

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.