Falling Asleep

Voices moving about in the quiet house:  

Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors:  

Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert.  

Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom  

Crowded with whispering trees; across the park

A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:  

And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon;  

The low, red, rising moon. Now herons call  

And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls  

Sail from the wood 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… there was a bright 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 in my dream  

That I can watch the marching of my soldiers,  

And count their faces; faces; sunlit faces.

Falling asleep… the herons, and the hounds….  

September in the darkness; and the world  

I’ve known; all fading past me into peace.