New and Selected Poems

Home > Other > New and Selected Poems > Page 9
New and Selected Poems Page 9

by Hughes, Ted


  Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito

  Zoomed out and down

  To their sundry flesh-pots.

  ‘A final try,’ said God. ‘Now, LOVE.’

  Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and

  Man’s bodiless prodigious head

  Bulbed out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,

  Jabbering protest –

  And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.

  And woman’s vulva dropped over man’s neck and tightened.

  The two struggled together on the grass.

  God struggled to part them, cursed, wept –

  Crow flew guiltily off.

  That Moment

  When the pistol muzzle oozing blue vapour

  Was lifted away

  Like a cigarette lifted from an ashtray

  And the only face left in the world

  Lay broken

  Between hands that relaxed, being too late

  And the trees closed forever

  And the streets closed forever

  And the body lay on the gravel

  Of the abandoned world

  Among abandoned utilities

  Exposed to infinity forever

  Crow had to start searching for something to eat.

  Crow Tyrannosaurus

  Creation quaked voices –

  It was a cortege

  Of mourning and lament

  Crow could hear and he looked around fearfully.

  The swift’s body fled past

  Pulsating

  With insects

  And their anguish, all it had eaten.

  The cat’s body writhed

  Gagging

  A tunnel

  Of incoming death-struggles, sorrow on sorrow.

  And the dog was a bulging filterbag

  Of all the deaths it had gulped for the flesh and the bones.

  It could not digest their screeching finales.

  Its shapeless cry was a blort of all those voices.

  Even man he was a walking

  Abattoir

  Of innocents –

  His brain incinerating their outcry.

  Crow thought ‘Alas

  Alas ought I

  To stop eating

  And try to become the light?’

  But his eye saw a grub. And his head, trapsprung, stabbed.

  And he listened

  And he heard

  Weeping

  Grubs grubs He stabbed he stabbed

  Weeping

  Weeping

  Weeping he walked and stabbed

  Thus came the eye’s

  roundness

  the ear’s

  deafness.

  The Black Beast

  Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow, like an owl, swivelled his head.

  Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow hid in its bed, to ambush it.

  Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow sat in its chair, telling loud lies against the Black Beast.

  Where is it?

  Crow shouted after midnight, pounding the wall with a last.

  Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow split his enemy’s skull to the pineal gland.

  Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow crucified a frog under a microscope, he peered into the brain of a dogfish.

  Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow roasted the earth to a clinker, he charged into space –

  Where is the Black Beast?

  The silences of space decamped, space flitted in every direction –

  Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow flailed immensely through the vacuum, he screeched after the disappearing stars –

  Where is it? Where is the Black Beast?

  Crow’s Account of the Battle

  There was this terrific battle.

  The noise was as much

  As the limits of possible noise could take.

  There were screams higher groans deeper

  Than any ear could hold.

  Many eardrums burst and some walls

  Collapsed to escape the noise.

  Everything struggled on its way

  Through this tearing deafness

  As through a torrent in a dark cave.

  The cartridges were banging off, as planned,

  The fingers were keeping things going

  According to excitement and orders.

  The unhurt eyes were full of deadliness.

  The bullets pursued their courses

  Through clods of stone, earth and skin,

  Through intestines, pocket-books, brains, hair, teeth

  According to Universal laws.

  And mouths cried ‘Mamma’

  From sudden traps of calculus,

  Theorems wrenched men in two,

  Shock-severed eyes watched blood

  Squandering as from a drain-pipe

  Into the blanks between stars.

  Faces slammed down into clay

  As for the making of a life-mask

  Knew that even on the sun’s surface

  They could not be learning more or more to the point.

  Reality was giving its lesson,

  Its mishmash of scripture and physics,

  With here, brains in hands, for example,

  And there, legs in a treetop.

  There was no escape except into death.

  And still it went on – it outlasted

  Many prayers, many a proved watch,

  Many bodies in excellent trim,

  Till the explosives ran out

  And sheer weariness supervened

  And what was left looked round at what was left.

  Then everybody wept,

  Or sat, too exhausted to weep,

  Or lay, too hurt to weep.

  And when the smoke cleared it became clear

  This had happened too often before

  And was going to happen too often in future

  And happened too easily

  Bones were too like lath and twigs

  Blood was too like water

  Cries were too like silence

  The most terrible grimaces too like footprints in mud

  And shooting somebody through the midriff

  Was too like striking a match

  Too like potting a snooker ball

  Too like tearing up a bill

  Blasting the whole world to bits

  Was too like slamming a door

  Too like dropping in a chair

  Exhausted with rage

  Too like being blown to bits yourself

  Which happened too easily

  With too like no consequences.

  So the survivors stayed.

  And the earth and the sky stayed.

  Everything took the blame.

  Not a leaf flinched, nobody smiled.

  Crow’s Fall

  When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.

  He decided it glared much too whitely.

  He decided to attack it and defeat it.

  He got his strength flush and in full glitter.

  He clawed and fluffed his rage up.

  He aimed his beak direct at the sun’s centre.

  He laughed himself to the centre of himself

  And attacked.

  At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,

  Shadows flattened.

  But the sun brightened –

  It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

  He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

  ‘Up there,’ he managed,

  ‘Where white is black and black is white, I won.’

  Crow and the Birds

  When the eagle soared clear through a dawn distilling of emerald.

  When the curlew trawled in seadusk through a chime of wineglasses

  When the swallow swooped through a woman’s song in a cavern

  And the swift flicked through the br
eath of a violet

  When the owl sailed clear of tomorrow’s conscience

  And the sparrow preened himself of yesterday’s promise

  And the heron laboured clear of the Bessemer upglare

  And the bluetit zipped clear of lace panties

  And the woodpecker drummed clear of the rotovator and the rose-farm

  And the peewit tumbled clear of the laundromat

  While the bullfinch plumped in the apple bud

  And the goldfinch bulbed in the sun

  And the wryneck crooked in the moon

  And the dipper peered from the dewball

  Crow spraddled head-down in the beach-garbage, guzzling a dropped ice-cream.

  Crow on the Beach

  Hearing shingle explode, seeing it skip,

  Crow sucked his tongue.

  Seeing sea-grey mash a mountain of itself

  Crow tightened his goose-pimples.

  Feeling spray from the sea’s root nothinged on his crest

  Crow’s toes gripped the wet pebbles.

  When the smell of the whale’s den, the gulfing of the crab’s last prayer,

  Gimletted in his nostril

  He grasped he was on earth.

  He knew he grasped

  Something fleeting

  Of the sea’s ogreish outcry and convulsion.

  He knew he was the wrong listener unwanted

  To understand or help –

  His utmost gaping of brain in his tiny skull

  Was just enough to wonder, about the sea,

  What could be hurting so much?

  The Contender

  There was this man and he was the strongest

  Of the strong.

  He gritted his teeth like a cliff.

  Though his body was sweeling away like a torrent on a cliff

  Smoking towards dark gorges

  There he nailed himself with nails of nothing

  All the women in the world could not move him

  They came their mouths deformed against stone

  They came and their tears salted his nail-holes

  Only adding their embitterment

  To his effort

  He abandoned his grin to them his grimace

  In his face upwards body he lay face downwards

  As a dead man adamant

  His sandals could not move him they burst their thongs

  And rotted from his fixture

  All the men in the world could not move him

  They wore at him with their shadows and little sounds

  Their arguments were a relief

  Like heather flowers

  His belt could not endure the siege – it burst

  And lay broken

  He grinned

  Little children came in chorus to move him

  But he glanced at them out of his eye-corners

  Over the edge of his grin

  And they lost their courage for life

  Oak forests came and went with the hawk’s wing

  Mountains rose and fell

  He lay crucified with all his strength

  On the earth

  Grinning towards the sun

  Through the tiny holes of his eyes

  And towards the moon

  And towards the whole paraphernalia of the heavens

  Through the seams of his face

  With the strings of his lips

  Grinning through his atoms and decay

  Grinning into the black

  Into the ringing nothing

  Through the bones of his teeth

  Sometimes with eyes closed

  In his senseless trial of strength.

  Crow’s Vanity

  Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw

  Mistings of civilizations towers gardens

  Battles he wiped the glass but there came

  Mistings of skyscrapers webs of cities

  Steaming the glass he wiped it there came

  Spread of swampferns fronded on the mistings

  A trickling spider he wiped the glass he peered

  For a glimpse of the usual grinning face

  But it was no good he was breathing too heavy

  And too hot and space was too cold

  And here came the misty ballerinas

  The burning gulfs the hanging gardens it was eerie

  A Horrible Religious Error

  When the serpent emerged, earth-bowel brown,

  From the hatched atom

  With its alibi self twisted around it

  Lifting a long neck

  And balancing that deaf and mineral stare

  The sphinx of the final fact

  And flexing on that double flameflicker tongue

  A syllable like the rustling of the spheres

  God’s grimace writhed, a leaf in the furnace

  And man’s and woman’s knees melted, they collapsed

  Their neck-muscles melted, their brows bumped the ground

  Their tears evacuated visibly

  They whispered ‘Your will is our peace.’

  But Crow only peered.

  Then took a step or two forward,

  Grabbed this creature by the slackskin nape,

  Beat the hell out of it, and ate it.

  In Laughter

  Cars collide and erupt luggage and babies

  In laughter

  The steamer upends and goes under saluting like a Stuntman

  In laughter

  The nosediving aircraft concludes with a boom

  In laughter

  People’s arms and legs fly off and fly on again

  In laughter

  The haggard mask on the bed rediscovers its pang

  In laughter, in laughter

  The meteorite crashes

  With extraordinarily ill-luck on the pram

  The ears and eyes are bundled up

  Are folded up in the hair,

  Wrapped in the carpet, the wallpaper, tied with the lampflex

  Only the teeth work on

  And the heart, dancing on in its open cave

  Helpless on the strings of laughter

  While the tears are nickel-plated and come through doors with a bang

  And the wails stun with fear

  And the bones

  Jump from the torment flesh has to stay for

  Stagger some distance and fall in full view

  Still laughter scampers around on centipede boots

  Still it runs all over on caterpillar tread

  And rolls back onto the mattress, legs in the air

  But it’s only human

  And finally it’s had enough – enough!

  And slowly sits up, exhausted,

  And slowly starts to fasten buttons,

  With long pauses,

  Like somebody the police have come for.

  Robin Song

  I am the hunted king

  Of the frost and big icicles

  And the bogey cold

  With its wind boots.

  I am the uncrowned

  Of the rainworld

  Hunted by lightning and thunder

  And rivers.

  I am the lost child

  Of the wind

  Who goes through me looking for something else

  Who can’t recognize me though I cry.

  I am the maker

  Of the world

  That rolls to crush

  And silence my knowledge.

  Conjuring in Heaven

  So finally there was nothing.

  It was put inside nothing.

  Nothing was added to it

  And to prove it didn’t exist

  Squashed flat as nothing with nothing.

  Chopped up with a nothing

  Shaken in a nothing

  Turned completely inside out

  And scattered over nothing –

  So everybody saw that it was nothing

  And that nothing more could be done with it

  And so it w
as dropped. Prolonged applause in Heaven.

  It hit the ground and broke open –

  There lay Crow, cataleptic.

  Owl’s Song

 

‹ Prev