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 undo¹

　　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 undoing²，

　　And every stone I wind off like a reel.