The Thought-Fox

The poem

I imagine this midnight moment's forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock's loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow, A fox's nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve a movement, that now And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow Between trees, and warily a lame Shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye, A widening deepening greenness, Brilliantly, concentratedly, Coming about its own business

Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.