A Dream of First Love

I saw you in roads where twilight cottages stepped up on banks and walls of rough-hewn stone slipped in earthy cliffs along a sunken lane.

You were dressed in crimson, like the trivial berries, darker than shadow down the leaf-bare hedgerow, offering me a winter schoolday prize.

Low, in the brown valley, below, an unconquered wood by black had shortened the hill for an early night. A fair, with tinsel and tricked-out light, was shaking.

A river bent beneath brown stone bridges; the trounced day was bellowing under great round arch; and always, you had escaped, leaving me a discoloured rhythm.