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.