"One crow, sorrow
Two crows joy
Three crows a letter
Four crows a boy
Five crows silver
Six crows gold
Seven crows a story never to be told."
(William Butler Yeats)
Alex Colville based his 1980 painting Seven Crows on the Yeats poem. In literature, crows can act as a harbinger of death. Seven crows lurk over a field by the water as clouds hover overhead. The birds hang in the air as the unspoken tension hangs in the picture. Something is about to happen. Perhaps it's a thunderstorm, perhaps much more. It's "a story never to be told".
