The Colours

These are colours of the seasons: gold
for the portal flowering of birth; violet

for shy kisses in a shaded copse, for days
of fast and pleading, for the iris of Van Gogh;

rose, for one long day of joy, for the survival
of sea-thrift on a famished cliff-face ledge;

suburban avenues will be clothed
in the alb of cherry-blossom white;

white and gold the chasuble
of the chestnut tree, and white

for angels flying in to the festival of snow, for virgins
crossing all together the frozen ice-paths of the Alps;

red, for martyrs, for the late year standing of the dogwood,
the gift of tongues, the long delay of Good Friday

and the blood-stained building blocks of Gaza;
green, for the ordinary days, de tempore labouring,

for past time, in-between times and times ahead of times;
gold again, for the mind’s embossed

portal to the sacrament, and black
for the peaceful, the having-come-through, dead.

from The Colours

By kind permission of the author and Carcanet