Poetry Archives

Past seven o’clock: time to be gone;
Twelfth-night’s over and dawn shivering up:
A hasty cut of the loaf, a steaming cup,
Down to the door, and there is Coachman John.

Ruddy of cheek is John and bright of eye;
But John it appears has none of your grins and winks;
Civil enough, but short: perhaps he thinks:
Words come once in a mile, and always dry.

Has he a mind or not? I wonder; but soon
We turn through a leafless wood, and there to the right,
Like a sun bewitched in alien realms of night,
Mellow and yellow and rounded hangs the moon.

Strangely near she seems, and terribly great:
The world is dead: why are we travelling still?
Nightmare silence grips my struggling will;
We are driving for ever and ever to find a gate.

“When you come to consider the moon,” says John at last,
And stops, to feel his footing and take his stand;
“And then there’s some will say there’s never a hand
That made the world!”
                        A flick, and the gates are passed.

Out of the dim magical moonlit park,
Out to the workday road and wider skies:
There’s a warm flush in the East where day’s to rise,
And I’m feeling the better for Coachman John’s remark.