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.

by

Ted Hughes