On Defeated Creek the night flows down the hills
And the foxes stir, the hounds pluck up their ears
In the hard dark shadows, in the webbed laurel thickets
Where the catbirds stir and scold the witless owls.
Call out your lousy hounds, boys,
Rouse out the pot and boodle,
Fotch out the lean lank hounds, lads,
Loose the bitch and scootle.
Stir fox, stir bat, stir the weasely doodle.
Foxes traipsing on Defeated Creek,
Hitty-o, ditty-o, dell,
Foxes sparking on Defeated Creek,
Knock wood, clank iron, ring bell.
The heavy-hipped ridges are leashed with pale fog’s binding
And the dark ivy, the green-stemmed eddying river,
Flows in leaf-waves over the root-sewn rock
And pinched white blossoms scud in threaded winding.
There’s a fox on Defeated Creek.
By gats his eyes are like double sunballs,
His fur ripe as moonlight boiling on a wheat patch,
His feet as soft as the sappy willow buds
And swift as August lightning.
Unwax your deafened ears, my lads,
Peel the husk from your rusty sight.
There’s fox hams smoking the moon-pied slopes
And fox-bark ringing the high-shanked night.
Where the blood-red gash of fruited sumac blooms
The hounds wind the mountains round with wild hooting,
Stern tracking, and tongue-long panting,
Until the rotted darkness falls from bony shouldered hills
And doves moan low, moan long and lingering.
Foxes taking Defeated Creek
Hitty-o, ditty-o, dell,
Foxes taking Defeated Creek,
Hound dogs lazier’n hell.