We spoke wine-press “purple words”
Blending with wine-makers’ voices
Splashing purple across work floors.

“Blue words” kept the world aloft,
Like branch, bird, cloud and water…
Like time, spirit, celestial and divine…

“Green words” grew among us like grapes
And sang the sun’s green gratitude
For smoke and rain, twilight and dreams.

The “black words” we saw in color
Were indigo buntings in a magic forest
Or like fish that swallow moonlight.

Only at the entrance to the underworld
Are the unforgiving fluent in ash,
Though the words are dowsed in past light.