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Listening to Foxhounds When in that gold Offires, quietly sitting With the men whose brothers are hounds, You hear the first tone Ofa dog on scent, you look from face To face, to see whose will light up. When that light comes Inside the dark light ofthe fire, You know which chosen man has heard A thing like his own dead Speak out in a marvelous, helpless voice That he has been straining to hear. Miles away in the dark, His enchanted dog can sense How his features glow like a savior's, And begins to hunt In a frenzy ofdesperate pride. Among us, no one's eyes give offa light For the red fox Playing in and out ofhis scent, Leaping stones, doubling back over water. Who runs with the fox Must sit here like his own image, Giving nothing ofhimself To the sensitive flames, With no human joy rising up, Coming out ofhis face to be seen. And it is hard, When the fox leaps into his burrow, To keep that singing down, To sit with the fire Drawn into one's secret features, And all eyes turning around Listening to Foxhounds / 75 From the dark wood Until they come, amazed, upon A face that does not shine Back from itself, That holds its own light and takes more, Like the face ofthe dead, sitting still, Giving no sign, Making no outcry, no matter Who may be straining to hear. A DogSleeping onMy Feet Being his resting place, I do not even tense The muscles ofa leg Or I would seem to be changing. Instead, I turn the page Ofthe notebook, carefully not Remembering what I have written, For now, with my feet beneath him Dying like embers, The poem is beginning to move Up through my pine-prickling legs Out ofthe night wood, Taking hold ofthe pen by my fingers. Before me the fox floats lightly, On fire with his holy scent. All, all are running. Marvelous is the pursuit, Like a dazzle ofnails through the ankles, Like a twisting shout through the trees Sent after the flying fox Through the holes oflogs, over streams Stock-still with the pressure ofmoonlight. My killed legs, My legs of a dead thing, follow, Drowning with Others / 76 ...

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