Else has blown away on the east wind, Richard went away with
the wind from the west.
Hilary was taken by the wind from the true north.
Still the south wind is here today but the children are gone: Like
witches or fairytale sons
They came in a three. Like roses or leaves
Or laughter they were gusty. The roses moved and the clear
leaves, the weather was sunny.
The turn is warm today and the leaves limpid and the roses
running.
Else turned somersaults on the granite flags, she had had two
years to learn whatever she had learned.
She loved fear and a great black dog knocked her down
And licked her rumpled face and she screamed for joy. She waltzed
on the steep steps and languished through the bannisters.
Richard had thirteen more months, and the plans of monsters
Much on his mind. Richard hoped all things while the tricky
earth turned him over and over.
He was benevolent and wept only at wickedness
And the wind moved his hair and the leaves and roses around
him. Hilary had a secret or two
Too heavy to touch. He dazzled and dawdled
And understood, with reluctance, thorns and chlorophyll and
frost in roses and leaves and winds.
He has gone to school to learn simpler things.
The kind gardens of kindergarten have opened their mazes of
reassurance to Richard and Else.
Here the winds made the summer of leaves and roses
Blow flying and running about them. The black dog bounded,
the thunder moved and the hours blew round;
On the tomato-sprayer the crossbones and skull
Behind the pail in the shed smiled at them, but briefly. In the
peaked house hung the still bell
And the crayon-man figure was pinned
To sticks and the flames like roses blew in the wind’s ghost. The
children in secret wonder
Watched the faces that watched them.
This is one summer, not another. Goodbye, three children never
to be seen again. We will come back
They said, but they will not. They will go so quietly, so com
pletely.
Next summer three strangers whose names were handed like
torches from the three who went on the north,
East, west winds, from the three who did not could not stay and
went forever
At no moment with no gesture, irrecoverable as a single petal or
a green ghost flying, who went, where?
Goodbye Else, Richard, Hilary, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye.
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