The Thought Fox – Ted Hughes Poem

by
  1. I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
  2. Something else is alive
  3. Besides the clock’s loneliness
  4. And this blank page where my fingers move.
  5. Through the window I see no star:
  6. Something more near
  7. Though deeper within darkness
  8. Is entering the loneliness:
  9. Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
  10. A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
  11. Two eyes serve a movement, that now
  12. And again now, and now, and now
  13. Sets neat prints into the snow
  14. Between trees, and warily a lame
  15. Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
  16. Of a body that is bold to come
  17. Across clearings, an eye,
  18. A widening deepening greenness,
  19. Brilliantly, concentratedly,
  20. Coming about its own business
  21. Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
  22. It enters the dark hole of the head.
  23. The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
  24. The page is printed.