by Ted Hughes
Into the hound’s mouth? As I write this down
He runs still fresh, with all his chances before him.
27 December 1975
Roe-deer
In the dawn-dirty light, in the biggest snow of the year
Two blue-dark deer stood in the road, alerted.
They had happened into my dimension
The moment I was arriving just there.
They planted their two or three years of secret deerhood
Clear on my snow-screen vision of the abnormal
And hesitated in the all-way disintegration
And stared at me. And so for some lasting seconds
I could think the deer were waiting for me
To remember the password and sign
That the curtain had blown aside for a moment
And there where the trees were no longer trees, nor the road a road
The deer had come for me.
Then they ducked through the hedge, and upright they rode their legs
Away downhill over a snow-lonely field
Towards tree dark – finally
Seeming to eddy and glide and fly away up
Into the boil of big flakes.
The snow took them and soon their nearby hoofprints as well
Revising its dawn inspiration
Back to the ordinary.
13 February 1973
February 17th
A lamb could not get born. Ice wind
Out of a downpour dishclout sunrise. The mother
Lay on the mudded slope. Harried, she got up
And the blackish lump bobbed at her back-end
Under her tail. After some hard galloping,
Some manoeuvring, much flapping of the backward
Lump head of the lamb looking out,
I caught her with a rope. Laid her, head uphill
And examined the lamb. A blood-ball swollen
Tight in its black felt, its mouth gap
Squashed crooked, tongue stuck out, black-purple,
Strangled by its mother. I felt inside,
Past the noose of mother-flesh, into the slippery
Muscled tunnel, fingering for a hoof,
Right back to the port-hole of the pelvis.
But there was no hoof. He had stuck his head out too early
And his feet could not follow. He should have
Felt his way, tip-toe, his toes
Tucked up under his nose
For a safe landing. So I kneeled wrestling
With her groans. No hand could squeeze past
The lamb’s neck into her interior
To hook a knee. I roped that baby head
And hauled till she cried out and tried
To get up and I saw it was useless. I went
Two miles for the injection and a razor.
Sliced the lamb’s throat-strings, levered with a knife
Between the vertebrae and brought the head off
To stare at its mother, its pipes sitting in the mud
With all earth for a body. Then pushed
The neck-stump right back in, and as I pushed
She pushed. She pushed crying and I pushed gasping.
And the strength
Of the birth push and the push of my thumb
Against that wobbly vertebra were deadlock,
A to-fro futility. Till I forced
A hand past and got a knee. Then like
Pulling myself to the ceiling with one finger
Hooked in a loop, timing my effort
To her birth push groans, I pulled against
The corpse that would not come. Till it came.
And after it the long, sudden, yolk-yellow
Parcel of life
In a smoking slither of oils and soups and syrups –
And the body lay born, beside the hacked-off head.
17 February 1974
Coming down through Somerset
I flash-glimpsed in the headlights – the high moment
Of driving through England – a killed badger
Sprawled with helpless legs. Yet again
Manoeuvred lane-ends, retracked, waited
Out of decency for headlights to die,
Lifted by one warm hindleg in the world-night
A slain badger. August dust-heat. Beautiful,
Beautiful, warm, secret beast. Bedded him
Passenger, bleeding from the nose. Brought him close
Into my life. Now he lies on the beam
Torn from a great building. Beam waiting two years
To be built into new building. Summer coat
Not worth skinning off him. His skeleton – for the future.
Fangs, handsome concealed. Flies, drumming,
Bejewel his transit. Heatwave ushers him hourly
Towards his underworlds. A grim day of flies
And sunbathing. Get rid of that badger.
A night of shrunk rivers, glowing pastures,
Sea-trout shouldering up through trickles. Then the sun again
Waking like a torn-out eye. How strangely
He stays on into the dawn – how quiet
The dark bear-claws, the long frost-tipped guard hairs!
Get rid of that badger today.
And already the flies.
More passionate, bringing their friends. I don’t want
To bury and waste him. Or skin him (it is too late).
Or hack off his head and boil it
To liberate his masterpiece skull. I want him
To stay as he is. Sooty gloss-throated,
With his perfect face. Paws so tired,
Power-body relegated. I want him
To stop time. His strength staying, bulky,
Blocking time. His rankness, his bristling wildness,
His thrillingly painted face.
A badger on my moment of life.
Not years ago, like the others, but now.
I stand
Watching his stillness, like an iron nail
Driven, flush to the head,
Into a yew post. Something has to stay.
8 August 1975
While she chews sideways
He gently noses the high point of her rear-end
Then lower and on each side of the tail,
Then flattens one ear, and gazes away, then decidedly turns, wheels,
And moves in on the pink-eyed long-horned grey.
He sniffs the length of her spine, arching slightly
And shitting a tumble-thud shit as he does so.
Now he’s testy.
He takes a push at the crazy galloway with the laid back ears.
Now strolling away from them all, his aim at the corner gate.
He is scratching himself on the fence, his vibration
Travels the length of the wire.
His barrel bulk is a bit ugly.
As bulls go he’s no beauty.
His balls swing in their sock, one side idle.
His skin is utility white, shit-patched,
Pink sinewed at the groin, and the dewlap nearly naked.
A feathery long permed bush of silky white tail –
It hangs straight like a bell rope
From the power-strake of his spine.
He eats steadily, not a cow in the field is open,
His gristly pinkish head, like a shaved blood-hound,
Jerking at the grass.
Overmuch muscle on the thighs, jerk-weight settling
Of each foot, as he eats forward.
His dangle tassel swings, his whole mind
Anchored to it and now dormant.
He’s feeding disgustedly, impatiently, carelessly.
His nudity is a bit disgusting. Overmuscled
And a bit shameful, like an overdeveloped body-builder.
He has a juvenile look, a delinquent eye
Very unlikeable as he lifts his nostrils
And his upper lip, to test a newcomer.
Today
none of that mooning around after cows,
That trundling obedience, like a trailer. None of the cows
Have any power today, and he’s stopped looking.
He lays his head sideways, and worries the grass,
Keeping his intake steady.
15 September 1973
Sheep
I
The sheep has stopped crying.
All morning in her wire-mesh compound
On the lawn, she has been crying
For her vanished lamb. Yesterday they came.
Then her lamb could stand, in a fashion,
And make some tiptoe cringing steps.
Now he has disappeared.
He was only half the proper size.
And his cry was wrong. It was not
A dry little hard bleat, a baby-cry
Over a flat tongue, it was human,
It was a despairing human smooth Oh!
Like no lamb I ever heard. Its hindlegs
Cowered in under its lumped spine,
Its feeble hips leaned towards
Its shoulders for support. Its stubby
White wool pyramid head, on a tottery neck,
Had sad and defeated eyes, pinched, pathetic,
Too small, and it cried all the time
Oh! Oh! staggering towards
Its alert, baffled, stamping, storming mother
Who feared our intentions. He was too weak
To find her teats, or to nuzzle up in under,
He hadn’t the gumption. He was fully
Occupied just standing, then shuffling
Towards where she’d removed to. She knew
He wasn’t right, she couldn’t
Make him out. Then his rough-curl legs,
So stoutly built, and hooved
With real quality tips,
Just got in the way, like a loose bundle
Of firewood he was cursed to manage,
Too heavy for him, lending sometimes
Some support, but no strength, no real help.
When we sat his mother on her tail, he mouthed her teat,
Slobbered a little, but after a minute
Lost aim and interest, his muzzle wandered,
He was managing a difficulty
Much more urgent and important. By evening
He could not stand. It was not
That he could not thrive, he was born
With everything but the will –
That can be deformed, just like a limb.
Death was more interesting to him.
Life could not get his attention.
So he died, with the yellow birth-mucus
Still in his cardigan.
He did not survive a warm summer night.
Now his mother has started crying again.
The wind is oceanic in the elms
And the blossom is all set.
20 May 1974
II
The mothers have come back
From the shearing, and behind the hedge
The woe of sheep is like a battlefield
In the evening, when the fighting is over,
And the cold begins, and the dew falls,
And bowed women move with water.
Mother Mother Mother the lambs
Are crying, and the mothers are crying.
Nothing can resist that probe, that cry
Of a lamb for its mother, or a ewe’s crying
For its lamb. The lambs cannot find
Their mothers among those shorn strangers.
A half-hour they have lamented,
Shaking their voices in desperation.
Bald brutal-voiced mothers braying out,
Flat-tongued lambs chopping off hopelessness
Their hearts are in panic, their bodies
Are a mess of woe, woe they cry,
They mingle their trouble, a music
Of worse and worse distress, a worse entangling,
They hurry out little notes
With all their strength, cries searching this way and that.
The mothers force out sudden despair, blaaa!
On restless feet, with wild heads.
Their anguish goes on and on, in the June heat.
Only slowly their hurt dies, cry by cry,
As they fit themselves to what has happened.
4 June 1976
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
Mosquito
To get into life
Mosquito died many deaths.
The slow millstone of polar ice, turned by the galaxy,
Only polished her egg.
Sub-zero, bulging all its mountain-power,
Failed to fracture her bubble.
The lake that squeezed her kneeled,
Tightened to granite – splintering quartz teeth,
But only sharpened her needle.
Till the strain was too much, even for Earth.
The stars drew off, trembling.
The mountains sat back, sweating.
The lake burst.
Mosquito
Flew up singing, over the broken waters –
A little haze of wings, a midget sun.
Cuckoo
Cuckoo’s first cry, in light April,
Taps at the cool, suspended, ponderous jar
Of maiden blood
Like a finger-tip at a barometer.
That first ribald whoop, as a stolen kiss
Sets the diary trembling.
The orchard flushes. The hairy cop
se grows faint
With bluebells.
Sudden popping up of a lolling Priapus –
Hooha! Hooha!
Dizzying Milkymaids with innuendo.
Cuckoo jinks in – dowses his hawk-fright crucifix
Over the nest-bird’s eye
And leaves his shadow in the egg.
Then his cry flees guilty – woodland to woodland,
Hunted by itself, all day dodging
The dropped double that dogs it.
O Orphan of Orphans! O moon-witted
Ill-bred dud-hawk!
Cavorting on pylons, you and your witchy moll!
With heartless blow on blow all afternoon
He opens hair-fine fractures through the heirloom
Chinaware hearts of spinsters in rose-cottages.
Then comes ducking under gates, pursued by a husband.
Or, invisibly, stately, through the blue shire
Trawls a vista-shimmering shawl of echo.
Later, the pair of them sit hiccoughing,
Chuckling, syncopating, translating
That lewd loopy shout
Into a ghoulish
Double-act, stuttering
Gag about baby-murder.
Swans
Washed in Arctic,
Return to their ballroom of glass
Still in the grip of the wizard,
With the jewel stuck in their throats.
Each one still condemned
To meditate all day on her mirror
Hypnotised with awe.
Each swan glued in her reflection
Airy
As the water-caught plume of a swan.
Each snowdrop lyrical daughter possessed
By the coil
Of a black and scowling serpent –
Dipping her eyes into subzero darkness,
Searching the dregs of old lakes
For her lost music.
Then they all writhe up the air,
A hard-hooved onset of cavalry –
Harp the iceberg wall with soft fingers.
Or drift, at evening, far out
Beyond islands, where the burning levels
Spill into the sun
And the snowflake of their enchantment melts.
Buzzard
Big hands, big thumbs, broad workaday hands
Darkened with working the land
Kneading the contours, squeezing out rats and rabbits.
Most of the day elongates a telephone pole
With his lighthouse lookout and swivel noddle.
O beggared eagle! O down-and-out falcon!
Mooning and ambling along hedgerow levels,
Forbidden the sun’s glittering ascent –
As if you were sentenced to pick blackberries