New and Selected Poems

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New and Selected Poems Page 28

by Hughes, Ted


  The old man’s blood had spoken the word: ‘Enough’ 52

  The pig lay on a barrow dead 34

  The rat is in the trap, it is in the trap 76

  There was a man 111

  There was a person 110

  There was the sun on the wall – my childhood’s 121

  There was this man and he was the strongest 99

  There was this terrific battle 95

  The salmon were just down there 256

  The sea cries with its meaningless voice 83

  These grasses of light 158

  The sheep has stopped crying 136

  The strange part is his head. Her head. The strangely ripened 259

  The swallow – rebuilding 152

  The tide-swell grinds crystal, under cliffs 223

  The tiger kills hungry. The machine-guns 201

  The tractor stands frozen – an agony 179

  The violinist’s shadow vanishes 57

  The wind on Crow Hill was her darling 173

  The wolf with its belly stitched full of big pebbles 24

  They lift 163

  This evening 246

  This evening, motherly summer moves in the pond 23

  This house has been far out at sea all night 14

  This is the maneater’s skull 150

  This morning blue vast clarity of March sky 187

  ‘This water droplet, charity of the air’ 12

  Those stars are the fleshed forebears 30

  Till they seemed to trip and trap 126

  Tonight 247

  Underwater eyes, an eel’s 37

  ‘Up in the pools,’ they’d said, and ‘Two miles upstream’ 244

  Was it an animal was it a bird? 117

  Was the silkiest day of the young year 190

  Water wanted to live 118

  Waving goodbye, from your banked hospital bed 151

  We came where the salmon were so many 265

  We had a motorbike all through the war 194

  ‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote’ 293

  What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over 87

  What do they think of themselves 278

  When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white 97

  Whenever I am got under my gravestone 7

  When everything that can fall has fallen 125

  When God, disgusted with man 110

  When her grave opened its ugly mouth 312

  When it comes down to it 217

  When Parnell’s Irish in the House 28

  When the eagle soared clear through a dawn distilling of emerald 98

  When the gnats dance at evening 85

  When the patient, shining with pain 109

  When the pistol muzzle oozing blue vapour 93

  When the serpent emerged, earth-bowel brown 101

  Where is the Black Beast? 94

  Where the pool unfurls its undercloud 249

  Where there was nothing 172

  Who lived at the top end of our street 35

  Who modelled your head of terracotta? 295

  Who owns these scrawny little feet? Death 90

  Who put this pit-head wheel 280

  Who’s killed the leaves? 142

  Wind out of freezing Europe. A mean snow 178

  Yesterday he was nowhere to be found 285

  You did not want to be Christlike. Though your Father 300

  You had to strip off Germany 311

  You hosts are almost glad he gate-crashed: see 11

  Your bony white bowed back, in a singlet 191

  Your German 307

  Your temples, where the hair crowded in 297

  Your tree – your oak 155

  You were like a religious fanatic 300

  About the Author

  Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Yorkshire. His first book, The Hawk in the Rain, was published in 1957 by Faber and Faber and was followed by many volumes of poetry and prose for adults and children. He received the Whitbread Book of the Year for two consecutive years for his last published collections of poetry, Tales from Ovid (1997) and Birthday Letters (1998). He was Poet Laureate from 1984, and in 1998 he was appointed to the Order of Merit.

  Copyright

  This ebook edition published in 2010

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © Ted Hughes, 1995

  The right of Ted Hughes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–26303–5

 

 

 


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