Walpurgis

This after sunset summer
light is the closest
we can come
to the strangeness of a white
night its borrowed time

in which trees stand
motionless they
go blind without the sun
and on the hill a deer
coughs again                                                                                              

exploratory
in the June night as bats                      
veer between power lines
while someone’s radio
far downstream 

might be illusion
as if sound misplaced
itself when everything
fell out of step                                                          
in the incomprehensible   

                  

bright dark and out
of the woods the festive
children could
come jiving and drumming
dressed for carnival

– Skt. Hans’ digt af Fiona Sampson i New Statesman