A Ted Hughes Bestiary Read online

  And the streets closed forever

  And the body lay on the gravel

  Of the abandoned world

  Among abandoned utilities

  Exposed to infinity forever

  Crow had to start searching for something to eat.

  Crow and the Birds

  When the eagle soared clear through a dawn distilling of emerald

  When the curlew trawled in seadusk through a chime of wineglasses

  When the swallow swooped through a woman’s song in a cavern

  And the swift flicked through the breath of a violet

  When the owl sailed clear of tomorrow’s conscience

  And the sparrow preened himself of yesterday’s promise

  And the heron laboured clear of the Bessemer upglare

  And the bluetit zipped clear of lace panties

  And the woodpecker drummed clear of the rotovator and the rose-farm

  And the peewit tumbled clear of the laundromat

  While the bullfinch plumped in the apple bud

  And the goldfinch bulbed in the sun

  And the wryneck crooked in the moon

  And the dipper peered from the dewball

  Crow spraddled head-down in the beach-garbage, guzzling a dropped ice-cream.

  Crow Tyrannosaurus

  Creation quaked voices –

  It was a cortege

  Of mourning and lament

  Crow could hear and he looked around fearfully.

  The swift’s body fled past

  Pulsating

  With insects

  And their anguish, all it had eaten.

  The cat’s body writhed

  Gagging

  A tunnel

  Of incoming death-struggles, sorrow on sorrow.

  And the dog was a bulging filterbag

  Of all the deaths it had gulped for the flesh and the bones.

  It could not digest their screeching finales.

  Its shapeless cry was a blort of all those voices.

  Even man he was a walking

  Abattoir

  Of innocents –

  His brain incinerating their outcry.

  Crow thought ‘Alas

  Alas ought I

  To stop eating

  And try to become the light?’

  But his eye saw a grub. And his head, trapsprung, stabbed.

  And he listened

  And he heard

  Weeping

  Grubs grubs He stabbed he stabbed

  Weeping

  Weeping

  Weeping he walked and stabbed

  Thus came the eye’s

  roundness

  the ear’s

  deafness.

  Two Legends

  I

  Black was the without eye

  Black the within tongue

  Black was the heart

  Black the liver, black the lungs

  Unable to suck in light

  Black the blood in its loud tunnel

  Black the bowels packed in furnace

  Black too the muscles

  Striving to pull out into the light

  Black the nerves, black the brain

  With its tombed visions

  Black also the soul, the huge stammer

  Of the cry that, swelling, could not

  Pronounce its sun.

  II

  Black is the wet otter’s head, lifted.

  Black is the rock, plunging in foam.

  Black is the gall lying on the bed of the blood.

  Black is the earth-globe, one inch under,

  An egg of blackness

  Where sun and moon alternate their weathers

  To hatch a crow, a black rainbow

  Bent in emptiness

  over emptiness

  But flying

  Lineage

  In the beginning was Scream

  Who begat Blood

  Who begat Eye

  Who begat Fear

  Who begat Wing

  Who begat Bone

  Who begat Granite

  Who begat Violet

  Who begat Guitar

  Who begat Sweat

  Who begat Adam

  Who begat Mary

  Who begat God

  Who begat Nothing

  Who begat Never

  Never Never Never

  Who begat Crow

  Screaming for Blood

  Grubs, crusts

  Anything

  Trembling featherless elbows in the nest’s filth

  Examination at the Womb-Door

  Who owns these scrawny little feet? Death.

  Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.

  Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.

  Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.

  Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.

  Who owns these questionable brains? Death.

  All this messy blood? Death.

  These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.

  This wicked little tongue? Death.

  This occasional wakefulness? Death.

  Given, stolen, or held pending trial?

  Held.

  Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.

  Who owns all of space? Death.

  Who is stronger than hope? Death.

  Who is stronger than the will? Death.

  Stronger than love? Death.

  Stronger than life? Death.

  But who is stronger than death?

  Me, evidently.

  Pass, Crow.

  Crow’s Fall

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

  He decided it glared much too whitely.

  He decided to attack it and defeat it.

  He got his strength flush and in full glitter.

  He clawed and fluffed his rage up.

  He aimed his beak direct at the sun’s centre.

  He laughed himself to the centre of himself

  And attacked.

  At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,

  Shadows flattened.

  But the sun brightened –

  It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

  He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

  ‘Up there,’ he managed,

  ‘Where white is black and black is white, I won.’

  Owl’s Song

  He sang

  How the swan blanched forever

  How the wolf threw away its telltale heart

  And the stars dropped their pretence

  The air gave up appearances

  Water went deliberately numb

  The rock surrendered its last hope

  And cold died beyond knowledge

  He sang

  How everything had nothing more to lose

  Then sat still with fear

  Seeing the clawtrack of star

  Hearing the wingbeat of rock

  And his own singing

  Crow’s Elephant Totem Song

  Once upon a time

  God made this Elephant.

  Then it was delicate and small

  It was not freakish at all

  Or melancholy

  The Hyenas sang in the scrub: You are beautiful –

  They showed their scorched heads and grinning expressions

  Like the half-rotted stumps of amputations –

  We envy your grace

  Waltzing through the thorny growth

  O take us with you to the Land of Peaceful

  O ageless eyes of innocence and kindliness

  Lift us from the furnaces

  And furies of our blackened faces

  Within these hells we writhe

  Shut in behind the bars of our teeth

  In hourly battle with a death

  The size of the earth

  Having the strength of the earth.

  So the Hyenas ran under the Elephant’s tail

  As like a lithe and rubber oval
<
br />   He strolled gladly around inside his ease

  But he was not God no it was not his

  To correct the damned

  In rage in madness then they lit their mouths

  They tore out his entrails

  They divided him among their several hells

  To cry all his separate pieces

  Swallowed and inflamed

  Amidst paradings of infernal laughter.

  At the Resurrection

  The Elephant got himself together with correction

  Deadfall feet and toothproof body and bulldozing bones

  And completely altered brains

  Behind aged eyes, that were wicked and wise.

  So through the orange blaze and blue shadow

  Of the afterlife, effortless and immense,

  The Elephant goes his own way, a walking sixth sense,

  And opposite and parallel

  The sleepless Hyenas go

  Along a leafless skyline trembling like an oven roof

  With a whipped run

  Their shame-flags tucked hard down

  Over the gutsacks

  Crammed with putrefying laughter

  Blotched black with the leakage and seepings

  And they sing: ‘Ours is the land

  Of loveliness and beautiful

  Is the putrid mouth of the leopard

  And the graves of fever

  Because it is all we have –’

  And they vomit their laughter.

  And the Elephant sings deep in the forest-maze

  About a star of deathless and painless peace

  But no astronomer can find where it is.

  Littleblood

  O littleblood, hiding from the mountains in the mountains

  Wounded by stars and leaking shadow

  Eating the medical earth.

  O littleblood, little boneless little skinless

  Ploughing with a linnet’s carcase

  Reaping the wind and threshing the stones.

  O littleblood, drumming in a cow’s skull

  Dancing with a gnat’s feet

  With an elephant’s nose with a crocodile’s tail.

  Grown so wise grown so terrible

  Sucking death’s mouldy tits.

  Sit on my finger, sing in my ear, O littleblood.

  from Prometheus On His Crag

  Prometheus On His Crag

  Pestered by birds roosting and defecating,

  The chattering static of the wind-honed summit,

  The clusterers to heaven, the sun-darkeners –

  Shouted a world’s end shout.

  Then the swallow folded its barbs and fell,

  The dove’s bubble of fluorescence burst,

  Nightingale and cuckoo

  Plunged into padded forests where the woodpecker

  Eyes bleached insane

  Howled laughter into dead holes.

  The birds became what birds have ever since been,

  Scratching, probing, peering for a lost world –

  A world of holy, happy notions shattered

  By the shout

  That brought Prometheus peace

  And woke the vulture.

  Prometheus On His Crag

  Began to admire the vulture

  It knew what it was doing

  It went on doing it

  Swallowing not only his liver

  But managing also to digest its guilt

  And hang itself again just under the sun

  Like a heavenly weighing scales

  Balancing the gift of life

  And the cost of the gift

  Without a tremor

  As if both were nothing.

  The Lamentable History of the Human Calf

  O there was a maiden, a maiden, a maiden

  And she was a knock-out.

  Will you be my bride, I sighed, I cried, I was ready to die.

  And she replied, what did she reply?

  ‘Give me your nose, for a kiss’ she sighed. ‘It’s a fair pawn!’

  So I sliced off my nose

  And she fed it to her puppy.

  Lady, are you satisfied?

  ‘O give me your ears, to share my fears, in the night, in my bed, where nobody hears, my darling!’

  So I sliced off my ears

  And she fed them to her puppy.

  ‘Now let me have your legs, lest they carry you far,

  O my darling, far from my side,’ she cried.

  So I chopped off my legs and she gave them to her puppy.

  Lady, are you happy?

  ‘O I want your heart, your heart, your heart, will it never be mine? Let me hold it,’ she cried.

  So I sliced me wide, and I ripped out the part

  And she fed it to her puppy.

  Lady, are you satisfied?

  ‘O give me your liver, or I’ll leave you forever.

  Give me your tongue, your tongue, your tongue

  Lest it whisper to another.

  Give me your lungs that hurt you with their sighs,’

  She cried.

  With tears of love, with tears of love, I hacked out those dainties

  And she fed them to her puppy.

  Lady, are you satisfied?

  ‘O give me your eyes, your rolling eyes,

  That splash me with their tears, that go roving after others.

  And give me your brains, that give you such pains

  With doubting of my love, with doubting of my love.

  And give me your arms, that all night long when you’re far from my side they’ll clasp me, clasp me’

  And she cried, ‘I’ll be your bride!’

  So I tore out my eyes and I gouged out my brains and I sawed off my arms and I gave them to my darling

  And she fed them to her puppy.

  Lady, are you satisfied?

  ‘No, give me your skin, that holds you in,

  O pour out your blood in a bowl and let me drink it, be mine.

  O slice off your flesh and I’ll nibble your bones, my darling!’

  So I dragged off my skin and I brimmed it with my blood and I rolled up my flesh and I basketted my bones and I laid them at her door and she cried and she cried

  Puppy, puppy, puppy.

  Lady, I said, though I’m nothing but a soul, I have paid down the price, now come to be my bride.

  But the puppy had grown, the puppy was a dog, was a big fat bitch, and my darling wept

  ‘Take my dog,’ she wept, ‘O take it.

  You are only a soul, how can we now be married?

  So take my dog for this dog it is my soul,

  I give you my soul!’ And she gave me her dog.

  Lady are you satisfied?

  Now I live with a bitch an old sour bitch now I live with a bitch a bitch a bitch so I live with a bitch an old sour bitch and there was a maiden a maiden a maiden …

  Swifts

  Fifteenth of May. Cherry blossom. The swifts

  Materialise at the tip of a long scream

  Of needle. ‘Look! They’re back! Look!’ And they’re gone

  On a steep

  Controlled scream of skid

  Round the house-end and away under the cherries. Gone.

  Suddenly flickering in sky summit, three or four together,

  Gnat-whisp frail, and hover-searching, and listening

  For air-chills – are they too early? With a bowing

  Power-thrust to left, then to right, then a flicker they

  Tilt into a slide, a tremble for balance,

  Then a lashing down disappearance

  Behind elms.

  They’ve made it again,

  Which means the globe’s still working, the Creation’s

  Still waking refreshed, our summer’s

  Still all to come –

  And here they are, here they are again

  Erupting across yard stones

  Shrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers,

  Speedway goggles, international
mobsters –

  A bolas of three or four wire screams

  Jockeying across each other

  On their switchback wheel of death.

  They swat past, hard-fletched,

  Veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof,

  And are gone again. Their mole-dark labouring,

  Their lunatic limber scramming frenzy

  And their whirling blades

  Sparkle out into blue –

  Not ours any more.

  Rats ransacked their nests so now they shun us.

  Round luckier houses now

  They crowd their evening dirt-track meetings,

  Racing their discords, screaming as if speed-burned,

  Head-height, clipping the doorway

  With their leaden velocity and their butterfly lightness,

  Their too much power, their arrow-thwack into the eaves.

  Every year a first-fling, nearly-flying

  Misfit flopped in our yard,

  Groggily somersaulting to get airborne.

  He bat-crawled on his tiny useless feet, tangling his flails

  Like a broken toy, and shrieking thinly

  Till I tossed him up – then suddenly he flowed away under

  His bowed shoulders of enormous swimming power,

  Slid away along levels wobbling

  On the fine wire they have reduced life to,

  And crashed among the raspberries.

  Then followed fiery hospital hours

  In a kitchen. The moustached goblin savage

  Nested in a scarf. The bright blank

  Blind, like an angel, to my meat-crumbs and flies.

  Then eyelids resting. Wasted clingers curled.

  The inevitable balsa death.

  Finally burial

  For the husk

  Of my little Apollo –

  The charred scream

  Folded in its huge power.

  Mackerel Song

  While others sing the mackerel’s armour

  His stub scissor head and his big blurred eye

  And the flimsy savagery of his onset

  I sing his simple hunger.

  While others sing the mackerel’s swagger

  His miniature ocelot oil-green stripings

  And his torpedo solidity of thump

  I sing his gormless plenty.

  While others sing the mackerel’s fury

  The belly-tug lightning-trickle of his evasions

  And the wrist-thick muscle of his last word

  I sing his loyal come-back.

  While others sing the mackerel’s acquaintance

  The soap of phosphorus he lathers on your fingers

  The midget gut and the tropical racer’s torso