HE DO THAT TED HUGHES IN DIFFERENT VOICES
Nothing but
- a waste land.
Crow is bored
perched upon a branch
like a haiku
waiting to happen
but where
is a haiku
poet when
one really needs one.
Crows agree to play
Charades.
One falls to the forest floor
clutching its chest shouting
"Aghhhhh ya...got me
I'm a gonner!"
Then another and another
with a more cornier
one-liner than
the one before
looking more like spilled ink
than the last.
Crows having a blast
laughing their feathers off.
All big Film
Noir fans.
"Yeah, yeah...I got it
a ****** of crows!"
Across a hillside
a human stands
as if he had just sprouted
out of the land.
An Easter Island
of a man.
The sneer of cold command
upon those chiseled lips.
An Ozymandias!
"Look upon my mighty words and despair!"
Or more like
a granite gryphon
glaring at the crows' play
turning them over in his mind
until they
become words.
"Oh not that ******
Ted Hughes again!"
Crow mutters
to itself.
The poet unaware
that human thought
hangs frozen on the air
on such days as these.
The giant Hughes man
a poet made of iron
by some process of
emotional osmosis
absorbs their world and words
making it up as he goes along
for he great poet though he be
never learned to speak Crow.
The great man glares
at the sun
willing it into submission
the sun falters on a hillside.
He disappears into the snow
his fragile footprints
vanishing in a trice
lost to time
as if he has
never been born.
Crow does his best
impression
mocks and mimics
the human's thought.
"Nailing Heaven and earth together -
So man cried, but with God's voice.
And God bled, but with man's blood. "
A bell breaks
the sky's silence
crows scatter to
the heavens.
"Oh that Charlie
Crow...he is a one!"
One crow smirks to another.
"He do that Ted Hughes
to a tee!"
*
T.S. Eliot’s 1922 masterpiece “The Waste Land” was originally titled “He Do the Police in Different Voices,” a quote from Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend.
I went to see Ted Hughes at the Royal Festival Hall after an extensive day and night shift work in mental health for about four days as staff went sick or simply didn't turn up.. Couldn't remember if I was to meet my ******* Thursday in Friday street or not or wot. I was right under his lectern and he looked immense and a lot like Sam the Eagle in the Muppet Show in looks and manner. I kept falling asleep between syllables and would **** myself awake and every time I did so I would get that fierce Hughesian glare!