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