Three ways to say the same poem. Or is there just one way, and the others are facets, shadows that it casts?
1.
The world has shifted, all the summer gone;
The swallows that turned sky to ocean flown,
Turned wind to waves the length of summer days,
And with the turning wind, like dry leaves blown.
Beneath this sky of knotted winds and drifts
Of cloud, we stand our faces to the west,
To bathe in sunset’s fire, as summer fades,
And put the light half of the year to rest.
2.
Summer
gone, swallows flown
that turned the wind to waves,
and with the turning wind, like dry
leaves blown.
Beneath this sky of knotted winds
and drifts of cloud, we stand
as summer fades
to rest.
3.
Gone summer,
swallows and their wind-waves
blown leaves in the knotted sky.
We raise sun-fired faces
to the coming dark.
Jane Dougherty Writes 