He was about four, I think... it was so long ago.
 In a garden; he'd done some damage
 behind a bright screen of sweet-peas
 - snapped a stalk, a stake, I don't recall,
 but the grandmother came and saw, and asked him:
 "Did you do that?"

 Now, if she'd said why did you do that,
 he'd never have denied it. She showed him
 he had a choice. I could see, in his face,
 the new sense, the possible. That word and deed
 need not match, that you could say the world
 different, to suit you.

 When he said "No", I swear it was as moving
 as the first time a baby's fist clenches
 on a finger, as momentous as the first
 taste of fruit. I could feel his eyes looking
 through a new window, at a world whose form
 and colour weren't fixed

 but fluid, that poured like a snake, trembled
 around the edges like northern lights, shape-shifted
 at the spell of a voice. I could sense him filling
 like a glass, hear the unreal sea in his ears.
 This is how to make songs, create men, paint pictures,
 tell a story.

 I think I made up the screen of sweet peas.
 Maybe they were beans; maybe there was no screen,
 it just felt as if there should be, somehow.
 And he was my - no, I don't need to tell that.
 I know I made up the screen.  And I recall very well
 what he had done.