"Poetry is the voice of spirit and imagination and all that is potential, as well as of the healing benevolence that used to be the privileged of the gods." - Ted Hughes That said, here's a triptych of Ted Hughes poems. Hope you like them . The Thought-Fox I imagine this midnight moment's forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock's loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move. Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness: Cold, delicately as the dark snow A fox's nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve a movement, that now And again now, and now, and now Sets neat prints into the snow Between trees, and warily a lame Shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come Across clearings, an eye, A widening deepening greenness, Brilliantly, concentratedly, Coming about its own business Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed. Full Moon and Little Frieda A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket - And you listening. A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor. Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath - A dark river of blood, many boulders, Balancing unspilled milk. 'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!' The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work That points at him amazed. The Warm and the Cold Freezing dusk is closing Like a slow trap of steel On trees and roads and hills and all That can no longer feel. But the carp is in its depth Like a planet in its heaven. And the badger in its bedding Like a loaf in the oven. And the butterfly in its mummy Like a viol in its case. And the owl in its feathers Like a doll in its lace. Freezing dusk has tightened Like a nut screwed tight On the starry aeroplane Of the soaring night. But the trout is in its hole Like a chuckle in a sleeper. The hare strays down the highway Like a root going deeper. The snail is dry in the outhouse Like a seed in a sunflower. The owl is pale on the gatepost Like a clock on its tower. Moonlight freezes the shaggy world Like a mammoth of ice - The past and the future Are the jaws of a steel vice. But the cod is in the tide-rip Like a key in a purse. The deer are on the bare-blown hill Like smiles on a nurse. The flies are behind the plaster Like the lost score of a jig. Sparrows are in the ivy-clump Like money in a pig. Such a frost The flimsy moon Has lost her wits. A star falls. The sweating farmers Turn in their sleep Like oxen on spits. Ted Hughes
