He went across the fields to Plaister’s End. There was a lot of water in the brook, Sun and white cloud and weather on the mend For any man with any eyes to look. He found old Callow’s plough-bat, which he took, ’My innings now, my pretty dear,’ said he. ’You wait a bit. I’ll show you. Now you’ll see.’ Her chimney smoke was blowing blue and faint, The wise duck shook a tail across the pool, The blacksmith’s shanty smelt of burning paint, Four newly-tired cartwheels hung to cool. He had loved the place when under Anna’s rule. Now he clenched teeth and flung aside the gate, There at the door they stood. He grinned. ’Now wait.’ Ern had just brought her in a wired hare, She stood beside him stroking down the fur. ’Oh, Ern, poor thing, look how its eyes do stare,’ ’It isn’t it,’ he answered. ’It’s a her.’ She stroked the breast and plucked away a bur, She kissed the pads, and leapt back with a shout, ’My God, he’s got the spudder. Ern. Look out.’ Ern clenched his fists. Too late. He felt no pain, Only incredible haste in something swift, A shock that made the sky black on his brain, Then stillness, while a little cloud went drift. The weight upon his thigh bones wouldn’t lift; Then poultry in a long procession came, Grey-legged, doing the goose-step, eyes like flame. Grey-legged old cocks and hens sedate in age, Marching with jerks as though they moved on springs, With sidelong hate in round eyes red with rage, And shouldered muskets clipped by jealous wings, Then an array of horns and stupid things: Sheep on a hill with harebells, hare for dinner. ’Hare.’ A slow darkness covered up the sinner. ’But little time is right hand fain of blow.’ Only a second changes life to death; Hate ends before the pulses cease to go, There is great power in the stop of breath. There’s too great truth in what the dumb thing saith, Hate never goes so far as that, nor can. ’I am what life becomes. D’you hate me, man?’ Hate with his babbling instant, red and damning, Passed with his instant, having drunken red. ’You’ve killed him.’ ’No, I’ve not, he’s only shamming. Get up.’ ’He can’t.’ ’O God, he isn’t dead.’ ’O God.’ ’Here. Get a basin. Bathe his head. Ernie, for God’s sake, what are you playing at? I only give him one like, with the bat.’ Man cannot call the brimming instant back; Time’s an affair of instants spun to days; If man must make an instant gold, or black, Let him, he may, but Time must go his ways. Life may be duller for an instant’s blaze. Life’s an affair of instants spun to years, Instants are only cause of all these tears. Then Anna screamed aloud. ’Help. Murder. Murder.’ ’By God, it is,’ he said. ’Through you, you slut.’ Backing, she screamed, until the blacksmith heard her. ’Hurry,’ they cried, ’the woman’s throat’s being cut.’ Jim had his coat off by the water butt. ’He might come to,’ he said, ’with wine or soup. I only hit him once, like, with the scoop.