To follow the fox

To follow the fox at the hounds’ tails
And at their baying move a tailor’s inch
To follow, wild as the chicken stealer,
Scent through the clutches of the heather,
Leads to fool’s paradise where the redcoated killer
Deserves no brush, but a fool’s ambush.
Following the nose down dell, up rise
Into the map-backed hills where paths
Cross all directions, bracken points to the skies,
Leads, too, to a lead pit, whinny and fall,
No fox, no good, fool’s, not a fox’s, hole,
And that is the reward of labour
Through heath and heather at the mind’s will.
To follow the nose if the nose goes
Wisely at the dogs’ tails, leads
Through easier heather to the foul lair
Over a road thick with the bones of words.
If hunting means anything more than the chase
On a mare’s back of a mare’s nest or a goose,
Then only over corpses shall the feet tread,
Crunching the already broken,
And this way leads to good and bad,
Where more than snails are friends.