ONCE

With an old farmer whose hands

Played her thin body's slow

Neglected music she lived

In a gap in the hills where three

Pines kept the weight of the sky

From the roof patched with moss.

He came from the cold moor

Hooded with frost, in his eye

The light of the cracked lake

That once she had propped to comb

Her hair in. None but his love,

Stiff in his shagged clothes,

Could thaw by so poor a fire

As her smile made for him there

On the hearth of the dead day.