by Hughes, Ted
Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito
Zoomed out and down
To their sundry flesh-pots.
‘A final try,’ said God. ‘Now, LOVE.’
Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and
Man’s bodiless prodigious head
Bulbed out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,
Jabbering protest –
And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.
And woman’s vulva dropped over man’s neck and tightened.
The two struggled together on the grass.
God struggled to part them, cursed, wept –
Crow flew guiltily off.
That Moment
When the pistol muzzle oozing blue vapour
Was lifted away
Like a cigarette lifted from an ashtray
And the only face left in the world
Lay broken
Between hands that relaxed, being too late
And the trees closed forever
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 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.
The Black Beast
Where is the Black Beast?
Crow, like an owl, swivelled his head.
Where is the Black Beast?
Crow hid in its bed, to ambush it.
Where is the Black Beast?
Crow sat in its chair, telling loud lies against the Black Beast.
Where is it?
Crow shouted after midnight, pounding the wall with a last.
Where is the Black Beast?
Crow split his enemy’s skull to the pineal gland.
Where is the Black Beast?
Crow crucified a frog under a microscope, he peered into the brain of a dogfish.
Where is the Black Beast?
Crow roasted the earth to a clinker, he charged into space –
Where is the Black Beast?
The silences of space decamped, space flitted in every direction –
Where is the Black Beast?
Crow flailed immensely through the vacuum, he screeched after the disappearing stars –
Where is it? Where is the Black Beast?
Crow’s Account of the Battle
There was this terrific battle.
The noise was as much
As the limits of possible noise could take.
There were screams higher groans deeper
Than any ear could hold.
Many eardrums burst and some walls
Collapsed to escape the noise.
Everything struggled on its way
Through this tearing deafness
As through a torrent in a dark cave.
The cartridges were banging off, as planned,
The fingers were keeping things going
According to excitement and orders.
The unhurt eyes were full of deadliness.
The bullets pursued their courses
Through clods of stone, earth and skin,
Through intestines, pocket-books, brains, hair, teeth
According to Universal laws.
And mouths cried ‘Mamma’
From sudden traps of calculus,
Theorems wrenched men in two,
Shock-severed eyes watched blood
Squandering as from a drain-pipe
Into the blanks between stars.
Faces slammed down into clay
As for the making of a life-mask
Knew that even on the sun’s surface
They could not be learning more or more to the point.
Reality was giving its lesson,
Its mishmash of scripture and physics,
With here, brains in hands, for example,
And there, legs in a treetop.
There was no escape except into death.
And still it went on – it outlasted
Many prayers, many a proved watch,
Many bodies in excellent trim,
Till the explosives ran out
And sheer weariness supervened
And what was left looked round at what was left.
Then everybody wept,
Or sat, too exhausted to weep,
Or lay, too hurt to weep.
And when the smoke cleared it became clear
This had happened too often before
And was going to happen too often in future
And happened too easily
Bones were too like lath and twigs
Blood was too like water
Cries were too like silence
The most terrible grimaces too like footprints in mud
And shooting somebody through the midriff
Was too like striking a match
Too like potting a snooker ball
Too like tearing up a bill
Blasting the whole world to bits
Was too like slamming a door
Too like dropping in a chair
Exhausted with rage
Too like being blown to bits yourself
Which happened too easily
With too like no consequences.
So the survivors stayed.
And the earth and the sky stayed.
Everything took the blame.
Not a leaf flinched, nobody smiled.
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.’
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 br
eath 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 on the Beach
Hearing shingle explode, seeing it skip,
Crow sucked his tongue.
Seeing sea-grey mash a mountain of itself
Crow tightened his goose-pimples.
Feeling spray from the sea’s root nothinged on his crest
Crow’s toes gripped the wet pebbles.
When the smell of the whale’s den, the gulfing of the crab’s last prayer,
Gimletted in his nostril
He grasped he was on earth.
He knew he grasped
Something fleeting
Of the sea’s ogreish outcry and convulsion.
He knew he was the wrong listener unwanted
To understand or help –
His utmost gaping of brain in his tiny skull
Was just enough to wonder, about the sea,
What could be hurting so much?
The Contender
There was this man and he was the strongest
Of the strong.
He gritted his teeth like a cliff.
Though his body was sweeling away like a torrent on a cliff
Smoking towards dark gorges
There he nailed himself with nails of nothing
All the women in the world could not move him
They came their mouths deformed against stone
They came and their tears salted his nail-holes
Only adding their embitterment
To his effort
He abandoned his grin to them his grimace
In his face upwards body he lay face downwards
As a dead man adamant
His sandals could not move him they burst their thongs
And rotted from his fixture
All the men in the world could not move him
They wore at him with their shadows and little sounds
Their arguments were a relief
Like heather flowers
His belt could not endure the siege – it burst
And lay broken
He grinned
Little children came in chorus to move him
But he glanced at them out of his eye-corners
Over the edge of his grin
And they lost their courage for life
Oak forests came and went with the hawk’s wing
Mountains rose and fell
He lay crucified with all his strength
On the earth
Grinning towards the sun
Through the tiny holes of his eyes
And towards the moon
And towards the whole paraphernalia of the heavens
Through the seams of his face
With the strings of his lips
Grinning through his atoms and decay
Grinning into the black
Into the ringing nothing
Through the bones of his teeth
Sometimes with eyes closed
In his senseless trial of strength.
Crow’s Vanity
Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw
Mistings of civilizations towers gardens
Battles he wiped the glass but there came
Mistings of skyscrapers webs of cities
Steaming the glass he wiped it there came
Spread of swampferns fronded on the mistings
A trickling spider he wiped the glass he peered
For a glimpse of the usual grinning face
But it was no good he was breathing too heavy
And too hot and space was too cold
And here came the misty ballerinas
The burning gulfs the hanging gardens it was eerie
A Horrible Religious Error
When the serpent emerged, earth-bowel brown,
From the hatched atom
With its alibi self twisted around it
Lifting a long neck
And balancing that deaf and mineral stare
The sphinx of the final fact
And flexing on that double flameflicker tongue
A syllable like the rustling of the spheres
God’s grimace writhed, a leaf in the furnace
And man’s and woman’s knees melted, they collapsed
Their neck-muscles melted, their brows bumped the ground
Their tears evacuated visibly
They whispered ‘Your will is our peace.’
But Crow only peered.
Then took a step or two forward,
Grabbed this creature by the slackskin nape,
Beat the hell out of it, and ate it.
In Laughter
Cars collide and erupt luggage and babies
In laughter
The steamer upends and goes under saluting like a Stuntman
In laughter
The nosediving aircraft concludes with a boom
In laughter
People’s arms and legs fly off and fly on again
In laughter
The haggard mask on the bed rediscovers its pang
In laughter, in laughter
The meteorite crashes
With extraordinarily ill-luck on the pram
The ears and eyes are bundled up
Are folded up in the hair,
Wrapped in the carpet, the wallpaper, tied with the lampflex
Only the teeth work on
And the heart, dancing on in its open cave
Helpless on the strings of laughter
While the tears are nickel-plated and come through doors with a bang
And the wails stun with fear
And the bones
Jump from the torment flesh has to stay for
Stagger some distance and fall in full view
Still laughter scampers around on centipede boots
Still it runs all over on caterpillar tread
And rolls back onto the mattress, legs in the air
But it’s only human
And finally it’s had enough – enough!
And slowly sits up, exhausted,
And slowly starts to fasten buttons,
With long pauses,
Like somebody the police have come for.
Robin Song
I am the hunted king
Of the frost and big icicles
And the bogey cold
With its wind boots.
I am the uncrowned
Of the rainworld
Hunted by lightning and thunder
And rivers.
I am the lost child
Of the wind
Who goes through me looking for something else
Who can’t recognize me though I cry.
I am the maker
Of the world
That rolls to crush
And silence my knowledge.
Conjuring in Heaven
So finally there was nothing.
It was put inside nothing.
Nothing was added to it
And to prove it didn’t exist
Squashed flat as nothing with nothing.
Chopped up with a nothing
Shaken in a nothing
Turned completely inside out
And scattered over nothing –
So everybody saw that it was nothing
And that nothing more could be done with it
And so it w
as dropped. Prolonged applause in Heaven.
It hit the ground and broke open –
There lay Crow, cataleptic.
Owl’s Song
