The Green King

Near Yeo farm, the water
gets much darker
There is something deathlike
About these steel knives
Nothing can feel alive
In the land of the pike
This is just a death trap

Then I see a white swan
With her head sunk low
Swift and swallow like a cythe

 wet underfoot
Fields of wheat,
Cows that scatter
At trifling matters

The long track past Fresians
And all the world's reasons

Herons like the limestone
Crows like Egyptians
Go gleaning the fields
heads to the ground
Willows like sisters
Who knows where the wind blows

Somethings we lost
While others we found

I saw a heron the colour of stone
I stole her wings made them my own

I saw a heron the colour of stone
Standing by the rhyne all alone

I saw an old heron the colour of ivory
He was standing still as a statue made of memory

I saw an old heron like a tusk or a bone
Standing by the rhyne, standing all alone

The pigeons burst out
As I was walking home
I saw a heron the colour of ivory
Like a memory of a land I call home

I saw a heron like the tooth of a child
like the call of the wild
I saw a heron and it reminds me of home

The cows stampede
And they swish their tails
Down near Pilgram farm
On the low lands of Bagely and Theale
They don't make it easy,
But they don't make it hard

The sky is like limestone
and blue lias
Cut in by rain clouds
From a stone mason's compass
They don't make it easy
But nor do they stop it being so hard

Down in the marsh lands
Where the wind cuts the cards
And shuffles the cattle
and the buzzard shards
They don't make it easy,
But they sure don't stop it
Being so hard

I saw a deer stand in a field
The colour of orange peel

When the weather comes over
Across the mendips
Rain like a light mist descends
The wind that's blown
The green sea beneath us
Where the river Axe cutlass
cuts in its turn
The green heart stone

Like an emerald city
The hills shine so pretty
As thrones
As a labyrinth the fields and hedge
Criss cross below

And the weather comes across
In squalls
And throws the toss
Of which cloud will fall on us
And which will forego

Crooks peak in the distance
Trees walk down the beach heads
Dew drops fall on us
And we walk back home
With cold nose

As the Green king
On his hay stacks
Commands the sea gulls
And the rain
And the Green knight holding his Axe
Brings it down on the neck of Gawain