The snail pushes through a green night, for the grass is heavy with water and meets over the bright path he makes, where rain has darkened the earth's dark. He moves in a wood of desire, pale antlers barely stirring as he hunts. I cannot tell what power is at work, drenched there with purpose, knowing nothing. What is a snail's fury? All I think is that if later I parted the blades above the tunnel and saw the thin trail of broken white across litter, I would never have imagined the slow passion to that deliberate progress.

 . "But my life" he wrote "insists on continuities — between America and England between free verse and metre between vision and everyday consciousness. One could hardly ask for more.

Thom Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) born Thomson William Gunn was an Anglo-American poet who was praised both for his early verses in England where he was associated with The Movement and his later poetry in America even after moving toward a looser free-verse style. He won numerous major literary awards. After relocating from England to San Francisco Gunn who became openly gay wrote about gay-related topics—particularly in his most famous work The Man With Night Sweats in 1992—as well as drug use sex and topics related to his bohemian lifestyle.