WS Merwin - Fox Sleep lyrics

On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten it was the turning of autumn and already the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof the gla**y water and flickering yellow leaves in the few poplars and knotted plum trees were held up in a handful of sunlight that made the slates on the silent mill by the stream glisten white above their ruin and a few relics of the life before had been arranged in front of the open mill house to wait pale in the daylight out on the open mountain after whatever they had been made for was over the dew was drying on them and there were few who took that road who might buy one of them and take it away somewhere to be unusual to be the only one to become unknown a wooden bed stood there on rocks a cradle the color of dust a cracked oil jar iron pots wooden wheels iron wheels stone wheels the tall box of a clock and among them a ring of white stone the size of an embrace set into another of the same size an iron spike rising from the ring where the wooden handle had fitted that turned it in its days as a hand mill you could see if you looked closely that the top ring that turned in the other had been carved long before in the form of a fox lying nose in tail seeming to be asleep the features worn almost away where it had gone around and around grinding grain and salt to go into the dark and to go on and remember