The Thought-Fox

I

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 the flowing, is: In me.

II

The fox’s treading soft on the snow. It is a kind of entrance, Into the conscious dark. A flash of an agile shoulder, And he turns, his eyes full Of the dark brilliance of a thought, Other still.

III

I can see him breathe, the fox, Like an ember, warming my thoughts, Firing my wild imaginations With a hunger upheaval, As intricate as the mind itself. To know this fox… And let the story unfold.

• Ted Hughes