I saw the cloud in the morning sky
So I turned to go back inside,
And I said to my wife, ‘It’s a shepherd’s dawn,
Or the red sky early warning, torn
By the man with the evil eye.’
The silence hung in a leaden pall
As she turned her face away,
And I said: ‘I’m only the man behind,
I’m not to account for all mankind
Or a cloud at the break of day.’
She looked again and she pulled the blind
And the house was dark and still.
‘I’ve looked my last on the works of man
Through whispered tears on a trembling hand,
Or the cloud beyond the hill.’
So she sat herself where she sits today
By the glow of the ash-wood fire,
But she sees and hears and tells me nought
While the devil inside her can’t be bought,
Or ever be made to tire.
So whenever a cloud in the early dawn
Glows red in the morning sky,
I say to my wife: ‘It’s a shepherd’s dawn,
Or the red sky early warning, torn
By the man with the evil eye.’
9 June 1972