Please print a copy of this page on 8 1/2 by 11 paper, and bring it with you to class. You may make notes on this sheet about the poem, but you are not allowed to consult any other texts while you are writing. In class, you will be given five questions about the poem. The answers must be written during the first hour of the class, on the paper provided. (The poem is also found on page 264 of the Currents anthology.)

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:                  5

Something more near

Though deeper within darkness

Is entering the loneliness:

 

Cold, delicately as the dark snow

A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;                      10

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               15

Of a body that is bold to come

 

Across clearings, an eye,

A widening deepening greenness,

Brilliantly, concentratedly,

Coming about its own business                       20

 

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.