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Poem In October

 It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
 And the mussel pooled and the heron
 Priested shore
 The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
 Myself to set foot
 That second
 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 autumn
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 gates
 Of the town closed as the town awoke.

 A springful of larks in a rolling
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 suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
 To the rain wringing
 Wind blow cold
 In the wood faraway under me.

 Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
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 gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
 There could I marvel
 My birthday
 Away but the weather turned around.

 It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
 Streamed again a wonder of summer
 With apples
 Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
 Through the parables
 Of sun light
 And the legends of the green chapels

 And the twice told fields of infancy
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 listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
 And the mystery
 Sang alive
 Still in the water and singingbirds.

 And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
 Joy of the long dead child sang burning
 In the sun.
 It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
 O may my heart's truth
 Still be sung
 On this high hill in a year's turning.






Book: Reflection on the Important Things