New and Selected Poems (34 page)

Read New and Selected Poems Online

Authors: Ted Hughes

Tags: #nepalifiction, #TPB

BOOK: New and Selected Poems
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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

Right 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

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

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