1
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
"Digging" (1966)
2
Don't be surprised
If I demur, for, be advised
My passport's green.
No glass of ours was ever raised
To toast
The Queen
.
rebuking the editors of The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry for including him among its authors
Open Letter
(Field Day pamphlet no. 2, 1983)
3
My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger,
I walked among their old haunts, the home ground where they bled;
And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter
Till its oak would sprout in Derry where the thirteen men lay dead.
of Bloody Sunday, Londonderry, 30 January 1972
"The Road to Derry"
4
The famous
Northern reticence, the tight gag of place
And times: yes, yes. Of the "wee six" I sing
Where to be saved you only must save face
And whatever you say, you say nothing.
"Whatever You Say Say Nothing" (1975)
5
No death outside my immediate family has left me more bereft. No death in my lifetime has hurt poets more.
funeral oration for Ted Hughes, 3 November 1998