Red Sky Warning

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.’

 

David Lewis Paget