New and Selected Poems

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New and Selected Poems Page 11

by Hughes, Ted


  They fasten together. They seem to be eating each other.

  But they are not eating each other.

  They do not know what else to do.

  They have begun to dance a strange dance.

  And this is the marriage of these simple creatures –

  Celebrated here, in the darkness of the sun,

  Without guest or God.

  The Lovepet

  Was it an animal was it a bird?

  She stroked it. He spoke to it softly.

  She made her voice its happy forest.

  He brought it out with sugarlump smiles.

  Soon it was licking their kisses.

  She gave it the strings of her voice which it swallowed

  He gave it the blood of his face it grew eager

  She gave it the liquorice of her mouth it began to thrive

  He opened the aniseed of his future

  And it bit and gulped, grew vicious, snatched

  The focus of his eyes

  She gave it the steadiness of her hand

  He gave it the strength of his spine it ate everything

  It began to cry what could they give it

  They gave it their calendars it bolted their diaries

  They gave it their sleep it gobbled their dreams

  Even while they slept

  It ate their bodyskin and the muscle beneath

  They gave it vows its teeth clashed its starvation

  Through every word they uttered

  It found snakes under the floor it ate them

  It found a spider horror

  In their palms and ate it

  They gave it double smiles and blank silence

  It chewed holes in their carpets

  They gave it logic

  It ate the colour of their hair

  They gave it every argument that would come

  They gave it shouting and yelling they meant it

  It ate the faces of their children

  They gave it their photograph albums they gave it their records

  It ate the colour of the sun

  They gave it a thousand letters they gave it money

  It ate their future complete it waited for them

  Staring and starving

  They gave it screams it had gone too far

  It ate into their brains

  It ate the roof

  It ate lonely stone it ate wind crying famine

  It went furiously off

  They wept they called it back it could have everything

  It stripped out their nerves chewed chewed flavourless

  It bit at their numb bodies they did not resist

  It bit into their blank brains they hardly knew

  It moved bellowing

  Through a ruin of starlight and crockery

  It drew slowly off they could not move

  It went far away they could not speak

  How Water Began to Play

  Water wanted to live

  It went to the sun it came weeping back

  Water wanted to live

  It went to the trees they burned it came weeping back

  They rotted it came weeping back

  Water wanted to live

  It went to the flowers they crumpled it came weeping back

  It wanted to live

  It went to the womb it met blood

  It came weeping back

  It went to the womb it met knife

  It came weeping back

  It went to the womb it met maggot and rottenness

  It came weeping back it wanted to die

  It went to time it went through the stone door

  It came weeping back

  It went searching through all space for nothingness

  It came weeping back it wanted to die

  Till it had no weeping left

  It lay at the bottom of all things

  Utterly worn out utterly clear

  Littleblood

  O littleblood, hiding from the mountains in the mountains

  Wounded by stars and leaking shadow

  Eating the medical earth.

  O littleblood, little boneless little skinless

  Ploughing with a linnet’s carcase

  Reaping the wind and threshing the stones.

  O littleblood, drumming in a cow’s skull

  Dancing with a gnat’s feet

  With an elephant’s nose with a crocodile’s tail.

  Grown so wise grown so terrible

  Sucking death’s mouldy tits.

  Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.

  from CAVE BIRDS

  The Scream

  There was the sun on the wall – my childhood’s

  Nursery picture. And there my gravestone

  Shared my dreams, and ate and drank with me happily.

  All day the hawk perfected its craftsmanship

  And even through the night the miracle persisted.

  Mountains lazed in their smoky camp.

  Worms in the ground were doing a good job.

  Flesh of bronze, stirred with a bronze thirst,

  Like a newborn baby at the breast,

  Slept in the sun’s mercy.

  And the inane weights of iron

  That come suddenly crashing into people, out of nowhere,

  Only made me feel brave and creaturely.

  When I saw little rabbits with their heads crushed on roads

  I knew I rode the wheel of the galaxy.

  Calves’ heads all dew-bristled with blood on counters

  Grinned like masks where sun and moon danced.

  And my mate with his face sewn up

  Where they’d opened it to take something out

  Lifted a hand –

  He smiled, in half-coma,

  A stone temple smile.

  Then I, too, opened my mouth to praise –

  But a silence wedged my gullet.

  Like an obsidian dagger, dry, jag-edged,

  A silent lump of volcanic glass,

  The scream

  Vomited itself.

  The Executioner

  Fills up

  Sun, moon, stars, he fills them up

  With his hemlock –

  They darken

  He fills up the evening and the morning, they darken

  He fills up the sea

  He comes in under the blind filled-up heaven

  Across the lightless filled-up face of water

  He fills up the rivers he fills up the roads, like tentacles

  He fills up the streams and the paths, like veins

  The tap drips darkness darkness

  Sticks to the soles of your feet

  He fills up the mirror, he fills up the cup

  He fills up your thoughts to the brims of your eyes

  You just see he is filling the eyes of your friends

  And now lifting your hand you touch at your eyes

  Which he has completely filled up

  You touch him

  You have no idea what has happened

  To what is no longer yours

  It feels like the world

  Before your eyes ever opened

  The Knight

  Has conquered. He has surrendered everything.

  Now he kneels. He is offering up his victory

  And unlacing his steel.

  In front of him are the common wild stones of the earth –

  The first and last altar

  Onto which he lowers his spoils.

  And that is right. He has conquered in earth’s name.

  Committing these trophies

  To the small madness of roots, to the mineral stasis

  And to rain.

  An unearthly cry goes up.

  The Universes squabble over him –

  Here a bone, there a rag.

  His sacrifice is perfect. He reserves nothing.

  Skylines tug him apart, winds drink him,

  Earth itself unravels him from beneath –


  His submission is flawless.

  Blueflies lift off his beauty.

  Beetles and ants officiate

  Pestering him with instructions.

  His patience grows only more vast.

  His eyes darken bolder in their vigil

  As the chapel crumbles.

  His spine survives its religion,

  The texts moulder –

  The quaint courtly language

  Of wingbones and talons.

  And already

  Nothing remains of the warrior but his weapons

  And his gaze.

  Blades, shafts, unstrung bows – and the skull’s beauty

  Wrapped in the rags of his banner.

  He is himself his banner and its rags.

  While hour by hour the sun

  Deepens its revelation.

  A Flayed Crow in the Hall of Judgement

  All darkness comes together, rounding an egg.

  Darkness in which there is now nothing.

  A blot has knocked me down. It clogs me.

  A globe of blot, a drop of unbeing.

  Nothingness came close and breathed on me – a frost

  A shawl of annihilation curls me up like a shrimpish foetus.

  I rise beyond height – I fall past falling.

  I float on a nowhere

  As mist-balls float, and as stars.

  A condensation, a gleam simplification

  Of all that pertained.

  This cry alone struggles in its tissues.

  Where am I going? What will come to me here?

  Is this everlasting? Is it

  Stoppage and the start of nothing?

  Or am I under attention?

  Do purposeful cares incubate me?

  Am I the self of some spore

  In this white of death blackness,

  This yoke of afterlife?

  What feathers shall I have? What is my weakness

  Good for? Great fear

  Rests on the thing I am, as a feather on a hand.

  I shall not fight

  Against whatever is allotted to me.

  My soul skinned, and my soul-skin pinned out

  A mat for my judges.

  The Guide

  When everything that can fall has fallen

  Something rises.

  And leaving here, and evading there

  And that, and this, is my headway.

  Where the snow glare blinded you

  I start.

  Where the snow mama cuddled you warm

  I fly up. I lift you.

  Tumbling worlds

  Open my way

  And you cling.

  And we go

  Into the wind. The flame-wind – a red wind

  And a black wind. The red wind comes

  To empty you. And the black wind, the longest wind

  The headwind

  To scour you.

  Then the non-wind, a least breath,

  Fills you from easy sources.

  I am the needle

  Magnetic

  A tremor

  The searcher

  The finder

  His Legs Ran About

  Till they seemed to trip and trap

  Her legs in a single tangle

  His arms lifted things, felt through dark rooms, at last with their hands

  Caught her arms

  And lay down enwoven at last at last

  His chest pushed until it came against

  Her breasts at the end of everything

  His navel fitted over her navel as closely as possible

  Like a mirror face down flat on a mirror

  And so when every part

  Like a bull pressing towards its cows, not to be stayed

  Like a calf seeking its mama

  Like a desert staggerer, among his hallucinations

  Finding the hoof-churned hole

  Finally got what it needed, and grew still, and closed its eyes

  Then such truth and greatness descended

  As over a new grave, when the mourners have gone

  And the stars come out

  And the earth, bristling and raw, tiny and lost

  Resumes its search

  Rushing through the vast astonishment.

  Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days

  She gives him his eyes, she found them

  Among some rubble, among some beetles

  He gives her her skin

  He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her

  She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

  She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists

  They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

  He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully

  And sets them in perfect order

  A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired

  She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing, incredulous

  Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them

  So that his whole body lights up

  And he has fashioned her new hips

  With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled

  He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

  They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily

  To test each new thing at each new step

  And now she smooths over him the plates of his skull

  So that the joints are invisible

  And now he connects her throat, her breasts and the pit of her stomach

  With a single wire

  She gives him his teeth, tying their roots to the centrepin of his body

  He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

  She stitches his body here and there with steely purple silk

  He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

  She inlays with deep-cut scrolls the nape of his neck

  He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

  So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment

  Like two gods of mud

  Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care

  They bring each other to perfection.

  The Risen

  He stands, filling the doorway

  In the shell of earth.

  He lifts wings, he leaves the remains of something,

  A mess of offal, muddled as an afterbirth.

  His each wingbeat – a convict’s release.

  What he carries will be plenty.

  He slips behind the world’s brow

  As music escapes its skull, its clock and its skyline.

  Under his sudden shadow, flames cry out among thickets.

  When he soars, his shape

  Is a cross, eaten by light,

  On the Creator’s face.

  He shifts world weirdly as sunspots

  Emerge as earthquakes.

  A burning unconsumed,

 

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