(Kokoschka)

Here where the water curves

the stones are tight against the weather.

“Its color comes from the leaves,

as the sky is tinted by blue bird feathers

and animals round the Earth,

but now our buttons are plastic.” The girl laughed.

Evening clouds shone like mother-of-pearl;

a tangerine Moon, misled

by a cold light on the burnished hills,

came up from the colder dead.

The boy asked: “Hear the flames?

Each Fall the water is fire music.”

Their reflections quivered in the air,

set to and fro like fish in aspic,

holding their lost names.