There is a group of three cygnets, and a group of two cygnets at the lake today. Their parents are all black, minus some underwing white, as well as the red and white of their bills, and the red of their eyes. The cygnets are all fluffy grey, save the black of their eyes and bills—they seem almost colourless. Same as the early purple swamphens are all black. Colour comes for them as the months arrive. Colour comes with adolescence and adulthood, with reproduction. Something arrives, the same way it does with the colour of the flowers on the plant. Same way it does with human beings coming of age. Same way, maybe, as poisons enter the plant. In the soul of the human being lives all the colour, lives all the flowering, lives all the poison that expresses itself in nature—all that comes down and enters the budding, growing life.