New and Selected Poems

by Hughes, Ted

  The guards indeed more defenceless

  More terribly naked needing

  The music more

  A Dove

  Snaps its twig-tether – mounts –

  Dream-yanked up into vacuum

  Wings snickering.

  Another, in a shatter, hurls dodging away up.

  They career through tree-mazes –

  Nearly uncontrollable love-weights.

  Or now

  Temple-dancers, possessed, and steered

  By solemn powers

  Through insane, stately convulsions.

  Porpoises

  Of dove-lust and blood splendour

  With arcs

  And plungings, and spray-slow explosions.

  Now violently gone

  Riding the snake of the long love-whip

  Among flarings of mares and stallions

  Now staying

  Coiled on a bough

  Bubbling molten, wobbling top-heavy

  Into one and many.

  INDEXES

  INDEX OF TITLES

  Anniversary 1

  Apple Dumps 1

  Apple Tragedy 1

  Astrological Conundrums 1

  Autumn Notes, from 1

  Bawdry Embraced, Song from 1

  Bayonet Charge 1

  Beacon, The 1

  Bear, The 1

  Bedtime Anecdote 1

  Being Christlike 1

  Birth of Rainbow 1

  Black Beast, The 1

  Black Coat 1

  Bones 1

  Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days 1

  Bringing in New Couples 1

  Bull Moses, The 1

  Cadenza 1

  Canal’s Drowning Black, The 1

  Casualty, The 1

  Cat and Mouse 1

  Chaucer 1

  Childish Prank, A 1

  Children 1

  Chinese History of Colden Water 1

  Cleopatra to the Asp 1

  Cock-Crows 1

  Coming Down Through Somerset 1

  Conjuring in Heaven 1

  Contender, The 1

  Cormorant, A 1

  Cranefly in September, A 1

  Crow and the Birds 1

  Crow Blacker than Ever 1

  Crow Hill 1

  Crow on the Beach 1

  Crow’s Account of the Battle 1

  Crow’s Battle Fury 1

  Crow’s Elephant Totem Song 1

  Crow’s Fall 1

  Crow’s First Lesson 1

  Crow’s Last Stand 1

  Crow’s Vanity 1

  Crow Tyrannosaurus 1

  Crow Wakes 1

  Curlews 1

  Dawn’s Rose 1

  Day He Died, The 1

  Deaf School 1

  Dehorning 1

  Descent 1

  Dogs Are Eating Your Mother, The 1

  Do not Pick up the Telephone 1

  Dove, A 1

  Dust As We Are 1

  Earthenware Head, The 1

  Earth-Numb 1

  Eclipse 1

  Eel, An 1

  Egg-Head 1

  Emily Brontë 1

  Error, The 1

  Esther’s Tomcat 1

  Evening Thrush 1

  Examination at the Womb-Door 1

  Executioner, The 1

  Fallgrief’s Girlfriends 1

  Famous Poet 1

  February 1

  February 17th 1

  Fern 1

  Fire-Eater 1

  Flayed Crow in the Hall of Judgement, A 1

  Folktale 1

  Football at Slack 1

  For Billy Holt 1

  For the Duration 1

  Fourth of July 1

  Fragment of an Ancient Tablet 1

  Full Moon and Little Frieda 1

  Ghost Crabs 1

  Gnat-Psalm 1

  God, A 1

  God, The 1

  Go Fishing 1

  Gog 1

  Green Wolf, The 1

  Grosse Fuge 1

  Guide, The 1

  Gulkana, The 1

  Hare, The 1

  Harvest Moon, The 1

  Hawk Roosting 1

  Hen, The 1

  Heptonstall 1

  Heptonstall Old Church 1

  Her Husband 1

  His Legs Ran About 1

  Honey Bee, The 1

  Horrible Religious Error, A 1

  Horses, The 1

  Howling of Wolves, The 1

  How Water Began to Play 1

  In Laughter 1

  In the Likeness of a Grasshopper 1

  In the M5 Restaurant 1

  Jaguar, The 1

  Japanese River Tales 1

  Kafka 1

  Knight, The 1

  Kreutzer Sonata 1

  Lake, The 1

  Last of the 1st/5th Lancashire Fusiliers, The 1

  Leaf Mould 1

  Leaves 1

  life is Trying to be Life 1

  Lineage 1

  Lines about Elias 1

  Littleblood 1

  Little Whale Song 1

  Locket, The 1

  Long Tunnel Ceiling, The 1

  Lovepet, The 1

  Lovesong 1

  Low Water 1

  Man Seeking Experience Enquires His Way of a Drop of Water, The 1

  March Calf, A 1

  Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar, The 1

  Match, A 1

  Mayday on Holderness 1

  Meeting 1

  Memory 1

  Memory, A 1

  Milesian Encounter on the Sligachan 1

  Moors 1

  Motorbike, A 1

  Mount Zion 1

  New Foal 1

  New Moon in January 1

  Night Arrival of Sea-Trout 1

  Notes for a Little Play 1

  November 1

  October Dawn 1

  October Salmon 1

  Old Oats 1

  On the Reservations 1

  Ophelia 1

  Opus 1 2

  Orts 1

  Other, The 1

  Otter, An 1

  Out 1

  Owl’s Song 1

  Performance 1

  Pibroch 1

  Pike 1

  Poets 1

  Prometheus on His Crag, from 1

  Prospero and Sycorax 1

  Public Bar TV 1

  Rain 1

  Rain-Charm for the Duchy 1

  Ravens 1

  Reckless Head 1

  Recklings 1

  Relic 1

  Remembering Teheran 1

  Retired Colonel, The 1

  Revenge Fable 1

  Rhododendrons 1

  Risen, The 1

  River in March, The 1

  River, The 1

  Robin Song 1

  Roe-Deer 1

  Sacrifice 1

  Salmon Eggs 1

  Scapegoats and Rabies 1

  Scream, The 1

  Second Glance at a Jaguar 1

  Seven Dungeon Songs, from 1

  Sheep 1

  Shibboleth 1

  Six Young Men 1

  Sketching a Thatcher 1

  Skylarks 1

  Small Events 1

  Smile, The 1

  Snow 1

  Snowdrop 1

  Soliloquy 1

  Song 1

  Song from Bawdry Embraced 1

  Song of a Rat 1

  Speech out of Shadow 1

  Stanbury Moor 1

  Stations 1

  Stealing Trout on a May Morning 1

  Still Life 1

  Stone, The 1

  Strangers 1

  Strawberry Hill 1

  Sunstroke 1

  Sunstruck 1

  Sunstruck Foxglove 1

  Swifts 1

  Telegraph Wires 1

  Tender Place, The 1

  Tern 1

  That Moment 1

  That Morning 1

  That Star 1

&n
bsp; Theology 1

  Thistles 1

  Thought-Fox, The 1

  Thrushes 1

  Tiger-Psalm 1

  To Paint a Water Lily 1

  Tractor 1

  Tree 1

  Trees 1

  Tutorial 1

  TV Off 1

  Two Legends 1

  Two Tortoiseshell Butterflies 1

  Vampire 1

  View of a Pig 1

  Violet at Lough Aughresberg, A 1

  Walt 1

  Warriors of the North, The 1

  Water 1

  When Men Got to the Summit 1

  Where I Sit Writing My Letter 1

  Widdop 1

  Wilfred Owen’s Photographs 1

  Wind 1

  Witches 1

  Wodwo 1

  Woman Unconscious, A 1

  You Hated Spain 1

  INDEX OF FIRST LINES

  A bang – a burning 155

  Above – the well-known lips, delicately downed 114

  A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket 87

  A fallen immortal found this valley 160

  After the fiesta, the beauty contests, the drunken wrestling 133

  After the five-month drought 285

  Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men 55

  A great bird landed here 171

  A green level of lily leaves 31

  A hoist up and I could lean over 32

  A lamb could not get born. Ice wind 186

  A leaf’s otherness 10

  All darkness comes together, rounding an egg 124

  And he is an owl 60

  A priest from a different land 170

  A primrose petal’s edge 151

  Are a stage 160

  A splinter, flicked 75

  A stoat danced on the lawns here 26

  As we came through the gate to look at the few new lambs 184

  As you bend to touch 227

  At nightfalll, as the sea darkens 58

  At the bottom of the Arctic sea, they say 155

  A trap 232

  Bad-tempered bullying bunch, the horned cows 176

  Began under the groan of the oldest forest 107

  Better disguised than the leaf-insect 51

  Between plunging valleys, on a bareback of hill 157

  Beyond a twilight of limes and willows 140

  Bird-bones is on the roof. Seventy-eight 182

  Blackness 168

  Black village of gravestones 78

  Black was the without eye 89

  Bloody Mary’s venomous flames can curl 19

  Bones is a crazy pony 214

  Born at the bottom of the heap. And as he grew upwards 271

  Bred wild leopards – among the pale depth fungus 166

  Bringing their frozen swords, their salt-bleached eyes 75

  Burning 113

  Calves harshly parted from their mamas 154

  Cars collide and erupt luggage and babies 102

  Collision with the earth has finally come 149

  Comes home dull with coal-dust deliberately 56

  Creation quaked voices 93

  Crowd the horizons, poised, wings 204

  Dawn – a smouldering fume of dry frost 193

  Dawn. The river thins 249

  Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat 27

  Dead, she became space-earth 198

  Death is also trying to be life 196

  Did music help him? Indeed it helped him 313

  Dripped a chill virulence 161

  Fallen from heaven, lies across 243

  Farmers in the fields, housewives behind steamed windows 15

  Fifteenth of May. Cherry blossom. The swifts 134

  Fills up 122

  First – the sun coming closer, growing by the minute 116

  For half an hour, through a magnifying glass 228

  Frightening the blood in its tunnel 42

  From what dog’s dish or crocodile’s rotten 20

  God tried to teach Crow how to talk 92

  Going up for the assault that morning 275

  Has conquered. He has surrendered everything 123

  Has not yet been cut 207

  Hearing shingle explode, seeing it skip 99

  He did not know she had risen out of the cinders 309

  He hears lithe trees and last leaves swatting the glass 208

  He loved her and she loved him 114

  Here before me, snake-head 258

  Here is the fern’s frond, unfurling a gesture 61

  He sang 104

  He’s lying in poor water, a yard or so depth of poor safety 262

  He smiles in a mirror, shrinking the whole 13

  He stands, filling the doorway 128

  Honeysuckle hanging her fangs 262

  How it hung 211

  I am the hunted king 103

  I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark 7

  I felt a strange fear when the war-talk 273

  I flash-glimpsed in the headlights – the high moment 188

  I found this jawbone at the sea’s edge 29

  I had exploded, a bombcloud, lob-headed, my huge fingers 53

  I know well 153

  I imagine this midnight moment’s forest 3

  In Hardcastle Crags, that echoey museum 158

  In the beginning was Scream 90

  In the dawn-dirty light, in the biggest snow of the year 181

  In the huge, wide-open, sleeping eye of the mountain 64

  I park the car half in the ditch and switch off and sit 45

  I remember going out there 298

  I see the oak’s bride in the oak’s grasp 150

  I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed 29

  Is melting an old frost moon 107

  I stood on a dark summit, among dark summits 167

  Is without world 84

  I was just walking about 267

  I whispered to the holly 50

  I woke to a shout: ‘I am Alpha and Omega’ 70

  Join water, wade in underbeing 255

  Jumbled iceberg hills, away to the North 250

  Just before the curtain falls in the river 260

  Light words forsook them 165

  Like a propped skull 49

  Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw 101

  ‘Mad laughter’, your sister – her grey perm 289

  Man’s and woman’s bodies lay without souls 91

  Mid-May – after May frosts that killed the Camellias 223

  My father sat in his chair recovering 72

  My mother in her feathers of flame 291

  My neighbour moves less and less, attempts less 63

  My post-war father was so silent 269

  new to the blood 206

  No, the serpent did not 70

  Not that she had no equal, not that she was 9

  Not your eyes, but what they disguise 197

  Now is the globe shrunk tight 40

  Now the river is rich, but her voice is low 132

  Now you have stabbed her good 71

  October is marigold, and yet 14

  Of the main-road canal bridge 169

  O lady, when the tipped cup of the moon blessed you 4

  O littleblood, hiding from the mountains in the mountains 119

  On a flaked ridge of the desert 59

  Once I said lightly 149

  Once upon a time 105

  Once was every woman the witch 39

  On moors where people get lost and die of air 48

  On the sheep-cropped summit, under hot sun 33

  Opus 131 in C Sharp Minor 310

  Our sad coats assemble at the counter 203

  Outcrop stone is miserly 55

  Pain was pulled down over his eyes like a fool’s hat 208

  Pike, three inches long, perfect 41

  Prometheus on His Crag 218

  Rain. Floods. Frost. And after frost, rain 175

  R
ight from the start he is dressed in his best — his blacks and his whites 131

  Rouses in its cave 205

  Russia and America circle each other 25

  She gives him his eyes, she found them 127

  She had too much so with a smile you took some 305

  She is struggling through grass-mesh – not flying 147

  She knows, like Ophelia 206

  Skinful of bowls he bowls them 60

  Sleeping and waking in the Song of Songs 306

  Sometimes it comes, a gloomy flap of lightning 154

  Snaps its twig-tether – mounts 315

  Snow falling. Snowflakes clung and melted 308

  So finally there was nothing 104

  Soldiers are marching singing down the lane 65

  So on the seventh day 112

  Spain frightened you. Spain 294

  Spluttering near out, before it touches the moors 52

  Stare at the monster: remark 5

  Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw 16

  Suddenly his poor body 61

  Suddenly hooligan baby starlings 225

  Take telegraph wires, a lonely moor 270

  Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn 39

  That Elf 238

  That is not your mother but her body 304

  That plastic Buddha jars out a Karate screech 215

  That star 204

  The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun 4

  The breaker humps its green glass 226

  The bright mirror I braved: the devil in it 43

  The celluloid of a photograph holds them well 17

  The chestnut splits its padded cell 144

  The deaf children were monkey-nimble, fish-tremulous and sudden 195

  The farms are oozing craters in 25

  The father capers across the yard cobbles 290

  The flame-red moon, the harvest moon 142

  The freedom of Saturday afternoons 162

  The grass-blade is not without 152

  The Hen 236

  The Honey Bee 227

  The hot shallows and seas we bring our blood from 27

  The lark begins to go up 78

  The longships got this far. Then 164

  The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land 36

  The morass is bulging and aborting 48