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 Huges 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 shiftwork 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!