What would the rain but splash and clatter,
Drain and gutter away.
Fain I would be soaked
But I have wandered today
Across an endless dark desert,
Where the wind found the song I was singing
And flung it into oblivion.
I was running
And of a sudden there was running everywhere, hither and thither.
I started to struggle.
Men and women with grim faces made a circle around me.
I had blood on my hands.
They didn’t know my name.
An old woman took me to a holy place.
And I listened by the fires to the giving of names,
Each name whispering its story.
Sparks flew into the face of the darkness.
Even now in the market-place I can hear them.
On the high moor, in the wind, even now I hear my own name called.
The books are all burned, the tall buildings all destroyed.
But I have heard,
There are new ways even now.
Just a little up the hill, under the beech,
There is a bench that looks out across the fields and over the town.
I will go that way again today.
