To A Friend

March will die into April,
autumn will age and be grey as a pensioner,
May will fade in a mist, the day come when
the tui no longer spandles
the scarlet flax-flowers with his song,
when the dawn brings sleet and the bees are quiet
and the morning thrush is dumb

Winter will come with a blast of wind
and a flourish of chilling showers,
and the sea will moan, the driftwood whiter grown
be swept in heaps like bones
and the bodies of dead sea-birds
will lie beyond the lash of the wave
the sea will rave and the surf cast rags of kelp on the shore
the creeks will rise, the streams with yellow water run
and the mud be cold and deep about your door
And the wind in the dark will roar
and the midnight fill with dread
but the drifwood fire will still be warm
at the midmost core
at the beating heart of the storm

Then like a smile from the dead
or a song from the granite rock
spring will come with its four blue eggs
that mirror the sky
in the nest in the privet hedge
with a blush of green on the willow
and buds on the sycamore
and the thrush in the macrocarpa
telling the time of life
The starling in the gutter
will splash in the shining air
the spiders make of their spittle
great cities in the grass
the fantail flit in the tea-tree
turn cartwheels over the mare
young violets charm the wind
even the dun unsmiling
bush at the head of the stream
hold up its flowers
to kiss the robe of the sun.
The time of doubt will pass,
faith and fact will be one.

Old friend, some day
when I’ve had my say, and the world its way,
then, O then will I come again
and stay for as long as I may,
stay till the time for sleep;
gaze at the rock that died before me,
the sea that lives for ever;
of air and sunlight,frost and wave and cloud,
and all the agony and joy,
all the agony and joy,
all the remembered agony and joy
fashion my shroud.

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