We once watched a crowd
.pull a drowned child from the lake
Blue lipped and dressed in water’s long green silk
.she lay for dead
,Then kneeling on the earth
,a heroine, her red head bowed
her wartime cotton frock soaked
.my mother gave a stranger’s child her breath
,The crowd stood silent
.drawn by the dread of it
The child breathed, bleating
.and rosy in my mother’s hands
My father took her home to a poor house
.and watched her thrashed for almost drowning
?Was I there
Or is that troubled surface something else
shadowy under the dipped fingers of willows
where satiny mud blooms in cloudiness
after the treading, heavy webs of swans
?as their wings beat and whistle on the air
All lost things lie under closing water
.in that lake with the poor man’s daughter
כל הזכויות שמורות לבריטיש קאונסיל ולי.
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