Falling Asleep

Voices moving in the quiet house:

Thud of feet and muffled shutting doors:

Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom

Crowded with the whispering trees;

Across the park

A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:

The low, red, rising moon

Now herons call

And wrangle by their pool;

And hooting owls sail above pale stooks of oats

Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these;

And where to-day was dream-like, build my dreams

Music ... a white room below

And someone singing a song

About a soldier, one hour, two hours ago:

And soon the song will be ‘last night’:

But now the beauty swings across my brain

Ghost of remembered chords

Which still can make such radiance

That I can watch the marching of my soldiers

And count their faces; sunlit faces

The herons, and the hounds....

September in the darkness

All fading past me into peace

When the old light comes in

It’s as sharp as a knife

You feel the drift in the pub

As the radio cries

September’s stars, September’s lies

September’s stars, September’s lies

When the old light comes in

It’s as sharp as a knife

You feel the drift in the pub

As the radio cries

I’ll know you when I see you

Now the mirrors are misted

But the room is the same

I see the face in the place in the painted lane

Ursa major at the edge of the rain

Ursa major at the edge of the rain

And now the mirrors are misted

But the room is the same

I see the face in the place in the painted lane

I’ll know you when I see you