Poem of the Day

This is the last one I have from Moon-Whales and Other Poems (everyone breathes a sigh of relief). They were a fun little diversion for me, though not the highest quality poems I’ve ever read. This one makes me think of Shel Silverstein. I’m sure he could have come up with an amusing illustration…

Cactus-Sickness
By Ted Hughes

I hope you never contract
The lunar galloping cact-
us, which is when dimples
Suddenly turn into pimples,
And these pimples bud—
Except for the odd dud—
Each one into a head with hair
And a face just like the one you wear.
These heads grow pea-size to begin
From your brows, your nose, your cheeks and your chin.
But soon enough they’re melon-size,
All with mouths and shining eyes.
Within five days your poor neck spreads
A bunch of ten or fifteen heads
All hungry, arguing or singing
(Somewhere under your own head’s ringing).
And so for one whole tedious week
You must admit you are a freak.

And then, perhaps when you gently cough
For silence, one of the heads drops off.
Their uproar instantly comes to a stop.
Then in silence, plop by plop,
With eyes and mouth most firmly closed,
Your rival heads, in turn deposed,
Land like pumpkins round your feet.
You walk on feeling light and neat.

In the next mirror you are assured
That now you stand completely cured.

We’ve been having a number of thunderstorms here lately, so I thought I’d share this one in an effort to make them stop via reverse psychology. (What? It’s possible such a technique could have an effect on the weather!)

Come Thunder
By Ted Hughes

Now that the triumphant march has entered the last street corners,
Remember, O dancers, the thunder among the clouds…

Now that laughter, broken in two, hangs tremulous between the teeth,
Remember, O Dancers, the lightning beyond the earth…

The smell of blood already floats in the lavender-mist of the afternoon.
The death sentence lies in ambush along the corridors of power;
And a great fearful thing already tugs at the cables of the open air,
A nebula immense and immeasurable, a night of deep waters—
An iron dream unnamed and unprintable, a path of stone.

The drowsy heads of the pods in barren farmlands witness it,
The homesteads abandoned in this century’s brush fire witness it:
The myriad eyes of deserted corn cobs in burning barns witness it:
Magic birds with the miracle of lightning flash on their feathers…

The arrows of God tremble at the gates of light,
The drums of curfew pander to a dance of death;

And the secret thing in its heaving
Threatens with iron mask
The last lighted torch of the century…

Here’s another one by Hughes, from Moon-Whales and Other Poems.

Moon-Shadow Beggars
By Ted Hughes

Crossing the frontier from dark to light
You pass the shadows, some of which bite
Because they need your blood, some on one leg
Hobble beside you and merely beg.
You can’t hear what it is they want you to give—
I’ll tell you, it is the body in which you live.
They cling with fingers that have no strength,
They reach after you with arms of elastic length,
They screech, sob and suffer in a dreadful way.
Be resolute, pass they without delay.
For if you pity them, and pause, you will stay
Caught among them forever, they will pour
Into you through the wide open door
Of your eye-pupil, and fill you up
And you will be nothing but a skinful of shadows
Whispering shadow-talk and groping for
The well-known handle of your own front door
With fingers that cannot feel it.
It is a horrible state and nothing can heal it.

Here’s another from Ted Hughes’s Moon-Whales and Other Poems.

Earth-Moon
By Ted Hughes

Once upon a time there was a person
He was walking along
He met the full burning moon
Rolling slowly toward him
Crushing the stones and houses by the wayside.
He shut his eyes from the glare.
He drew his dagger
And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
The cry that quit the moon’s wounds
Circled the earth.
The moon shrank, like a punctured airship,
Shrank, shrank, smaller, smaller,
Till it was nothing
But a silk handkerchief, torn,
And wet as with tears.
The person picked it up. He walked on
Into moonless night
Carrying this strange trophy.

Here’s another from Moon-Whales and Other Poems. I think that Heather will especially appreciate it.

Music on the Moon
By Ted Hughes

The pianos on the moon are so long
The pianist’s hand must be fifteen fingers strong.

The violins on the moon are so violent
They have to be sunk in deep wells, and then they only seem to be silent.

The bassoons on the moon blow no notes
But huge blue loons that flap slowly away with undulating throats.

Now harmonicas on the moon are humorous,
The tunes produce German Measles, but the speckles more numerous.

Of a trumpet on the moon you can never hear enough
Because it puffs the trumpeter up like a balloon and he floats off.

Double basses on the moon are a risk all right,
At the first note enormous black hands appear and carry away everything in sight.

Even a triangle on the moon is risky,
One ping—and there’s your head a half bottle of Irish whisky.

In the same way, be careful with the flute—
Because wherever he is, your father will find himself converted into a disgusting old boot.

On the whole it’s best to stick to the moon’s drums.
Whatever damage they do is so far off in space the news never comes.

Current Tea: Honey Bee tea (black tea with sweet honey flavor from honey bee pollen)

I picked up Moon-Whales and Other Poems by Ted Hughes from the library after I learned of its existence (yay!) via Andrew Smith’s Moondust. Here’s the title poem.

Moon-Whales
By Ted Hughes

They plough through the moon stuff
Just under the surface
Lifting the moon’s skin
Like a muscle
But so slowly it seems like a lasting mountain
Breathing so rarely it seems like a volcano
Leaving a hole blasted in the moon’s skin

Sometimes they plunge deep
Under the moon’s plains
Making their magnetic way
Through the moon’s interior metals
Sending the astronaut’s instruments scatty.

Their music is immense
Each note hundreds of years long
Each complete tune a moon-age

So they sing to each other unending songs
As unmoving they move their immovable masses

Their closed eyes ecstatic

Andrew Smith included a book of Ted Hughes’s poems in his bibliography for Moondust, and I’d like to get it from the library, but in the meantime, here’s a selection I found online.

Full Moon and Little Frieda
By Ted Hughes

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.

Current Tea: Thai chai (green tea blended with coconut, ginger and lemongrass)