Virgins crunching snow in rosy mouthfuls
That pout, bellow teeth as white;

Virgins yelping through the snow;

Virgins brandishing sticks in tender fingers
Through blossom-shocks, gutters brim
With shattered cherry-flowers;

Virgins float white kites above the green, barelegged,
With hot breath off the lake, the lily-pads;

Or scoop the toad up hunkered in its must
Beneath the holly hocks, replace it, let it be,

And bound away on springy grass to buttercups.

They peruse
The pudgy bumble-bee that deep inside
Its glossy bristles whirrs
With cellophanes and ruby bladders;

Clouds beetle over, frown with thunder;
They offer kittens tooth-white milk in saucers,
Squeeze the deep-piled wolfhound's head
Tilting shut the pitchy blazing eyes;
Skim to school along forbidden meadows
Where, green with seepage of sore throats from tanks,
A whole city slithers and corruption carks;
Nip their noses closed in flowersoft fingers.

And as storm-air bristles with its shock of gnats
That thread mazes up the ripening drops
And winds yelp throughout the emptied schools,
They huddle under trees in snuffling showers,
Great horse-chestnut bluffs, while
the lake goes spiny ...

And with sun warm on their backs, stare
At those absences, their shadows; bound ball
Where the memorial lilies root, and flourish;
Those skinny wrists
Chafed round and round with sensible hard-wearing sleeves;
And tender sappy feet in hobbledehoy shoes.