Текст песни
It is a winter's tale
That the snow-blind twilight ferries
Over the lakes and floating fields
From the farm in the cup of the vales
Gliding windless through the hand-folded flakes
The pale breath of cattle at the stealthy sail
And the stars falling cold
And the smell of hay and the snow
And the far owl warning among the folds
And the frozen hold
Flocked with the sheep-white smoke of the farmhouse cowl
In the river-wended vales
Where the tale was told
Once when the world turned old
On a star of faith pure as the drifting bread
As the food and flames of the snow
A man unrolled the scrolls of fire
That burned in his heart and head
Torn and alone in a farmhouse in a fold of fields
And burning then in his firelit island
Ringed by the winged snow
And the dunghills white as wool
And the hen-roosts sleeping chill
Till the flame of the cock-crow
Combs through the mantled yards
And the morning men stumble out with their spades
The cattle stirring
The mousing cat stepping shy
The puffed birds hopping and hunting
The milkmaids gentle in their clogs
Over the fallen sky
And all the woken farm at its white trades
He knelt, he wept, he prayed
By the spit and the black pot in the log-bright light
And the cup and the cut bread in the dancing shade
In the muffled house in the quick of night
At the point of love forsaken and afraid
He knelt on the cold stones
He wept from the crest of grief
He prayed to the veiled sky
May his hunger go howling on bare white bones
Past the statues of the stables and the sky-roofed sties
And the duck-pond glass
And the blinding byres
Alone into the home of prayers and fires
Where he should prowl down the cloud
Of his snow-blind love and rush in the white lairs
His naked need struck him howling and bowed
Though no sound flowed down the hand-folded air
But only the wind-strung hunger of birds
In the fields of the bread of water
Tossed in high corn and the harvest
Melting on their tongues
And his nameless need bound him burning and lost
When cold as snow
He should run the wended vales
Among the rivers mouthed in night
And drown in the drifts of his need
And lie curled caught
In the always desiring centre
Of the white inhuman cradle
And the bride-bed forever sought
By the believer lost
And the hurled outcast of light
Deliver him he cried
By losing him all in love
And cast his need
Alone and naked in the engulfing bride
Never to flourish in the fields of the white seed
Or flower under the time-dying flesh astride
Listen!
The minstrels sing
In the departed villages
The nightingale, dust in the buried wood
Flies on the grains of her wings
And spells on the winds of the dead
His winter's tale
The voice of the dust of water
From the withered spring is telling
The wizened stream
With bells and baying water bounds
The dew rings
On the gristed leaves and the longgone glistening
Parish of snow
The carved mouths in the rock
Are wind-swept strings
Time sings
Through the intricately dead snowdrop
Listen!
It was a hand or sound
In the long-ago land
That glided the dark door wide
And there outside on the bread of the ground
A she-bird rose and rayed
Like a burning bride
A she-bird dawned
And her breast with snow and scarlet downed
Till she rose on the snow-white ground
And the sky was a white-veiled cloud
And the she-bird rose and rayed
Like a burning bride
Listen!
The minstrels sing
In the departed villages
The nightingale, dust in the buried wood
Flies on the grains of her wings
And spells on the winds of the dead
His winter's tale
The voice of the dust of water
From the withered spring is telling
The wizened stream
With bells and baying water bounds
The dew rings
On the gristed leaves and the longgone glistening
Parish of snow
The carved mouths in the rock
Are wind-swept strings
Time sings
Through the intricately dead snowdrop
Listen!
It was a hand or sound
In the long-ago land
That glided the dark door wide
And there outside on the bread of the ground
A she-bird rose and rayed
Like a burning bride
A she-bird dawned
And her breast with snow and scarlet downed
Till she rose on the snow-white ground
And the sky was a white-veiled cloud
And the she-bird rose and rayed
Like a burning bride.Look! And the dancers move
On the departed snow-bushed green
Wanton in moonlight as a dust of pigeons
Exulting, the grave-hooved horses
Centaur-dead, turn and tread
The drenched white paddocks
In the farms of birds
The dead oak walks for love
The carved limbs in the rock
Leap as to trumpets
Calligraphy of the old leaves
Is dancing; lines of age
On the stone weave in a flock
And the harp-shaped voice
Of the waters' dust
Plucks in a fold of fields
For love, the long-ago she-bird rises
Look! And the wild wings were raised
Above her folded head
And the soft-feathered voice
Was flying through the house
As though the she-bird praised
And all the elements
Of the slow fall rejoiced
That a man knelt alone
In the cup of the vales
In the mantel and calm
By the spit and the black pot
In the log-bright light
And the sky of birds
In the plumed voice charmed him up
And he ran like a wind
After the kindling flight
Past the blind barns and byres
Of the windless farm
In the poles of the year
When blackbirds died like priests
In the cloaked hedgerow
And over the cloth of counties
The far hills rode near
Under the one-leaved trees
Ran a scarecrow of snow
And fast through the drifts of the thickets
Antlered like deer
Rags and prayers down the knee-deep hillocks
And loud on the numbed lakes
All night lost and long
Wading in the wake
Of the she-bird through the times
And lands and tribes
Of the slow flakes
Listen and look where she sails
The goose-plucked sea
The sky, the bird, the bride
The cloud, the need
The planted stars, the joy beyond
The fields of seed
And the time-dying flesh astride
The heavens, the heaven
The grave, the burning font
In the far-ago land
The door of his death glided wide
And the bird descended
On a bread-white hill
Over the cupped farm
And the lakes and the floating fields
And the river-wended vales
Where he prayed to come
To the last harm
And the home of prayers and fires
The tale ended
The dancing perishes
On the white no longer growing green
And, minstrel-dead, the singing breaks
In the snow-shoed villages
Of wishes that once cut
The figures of birds on the deep bread
And over the glazed lakes
Skated the shapes of fishes flying
The rite is shorn of nightingale
And centaur-dead horse
The springs wither back
Lines of age sleep on the stones
Till trumpeting dawn
Exultation lies down
Time buries the spring weather
That belled and bounded
With the fossil and the dew reborn
For the bird lay bedded
In a choir of wings
As though she slept or died
And the wings glided wide
And he was hymned and wedded
And through the thighs
Of the engulfing bride
The woman-breasted
And the heaven-headed bird
He was brought low
Burning in the bride-bed of love
In the whirlpool at the wanting centre
In the furze of paradise
In the spun bud of the world
And she rose with him
Flowering in her melting snow