The Thought Fox

Rien Poortvliet

The Thought Fox

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 a 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.

Ted Hughes


"Something else is alive" - I love that. "Something more near..is entering the loneliness." This poem is perfect - the image, the rhythm, the concept - they fit together seamlessly, it really is as if the poem were an already-formed animal that had its own purposes and simply entered the head of the poet as it was passing through.