Entering the Head

"A fox's nose touches twig, leaf..."

—Anonymous Photo

 

THE THOUGHT-FOX
—Ted Hughes (1930-1998)

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.

____________________

—Medusa

For more about Ted Hughes, see www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ted-hughes/.
 

For more about 'The Thought-Fox", go to 

•••owlcation.com/humanities/Analysis-of-Poem-The-Thought-Fox-by-Ted-Hughes
•••www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/a-close-reading-of-the-thought-fox 

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