We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold

Running rest-day ... and here's an(other) appropriately entitled Ted Hughes poem!

It's from the pictured 2003 Collected Poems (which is a complete treasure-trove); the poem in question specifically being from Hughes' early 1957 volume 'The Hawk in the Rain':


September

We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold:
No clock counts this.
When kisses are repeated and the arms hold
There is no telling where time is.

It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still:
Behind the eye a star,
Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell
Time is nowhere.

We stand; leaves have not timed the summer.
No clock now needs
Tell we have only what we remember:
Minutes uproaring with our heads

Like an unfortunate King's and his Queen's
When the senseless mob rules;
And quietly the trees casting their crowns
Into the pools.


P.S. I should probably also mention that this Collected Poems was given to me for my 40th Birthday in December 2003 ... watching the dark slowly unfold indeed ;-)