Gory stuff, and brilliant poetry. Sometimes I like to remind myself just how good a poet Ted Hughes is. (As a poet he lives on in the present, I believe.)
Burned by Bloody Mary’s men at Caermarthen
If I flinch from the pain of the burning, believe not the doctrine that I have preached. — His words at the stake.
Bloody Mary’s venomous flames can curl; They can shrivel sinew and char bone Of foot, ankle, knee and thigh, and boil Bowels, and drop his heart a cinder down; And her soldiers can cry, as they hurl Logs in the red rush: “This is her sermon.”
The sullen-jowled watching Welsh townspeople Hear him crack in the fire’s mouth: they see what Black oozing twist of stuff bubbles the smell That tars and retches their lungs: no pulpit Of his ever held their eyes so still, Never, as now his agony, his wit.
An ignorant means to establish ownership Of his flock! Thus their shepherd she seized And knotted him into this blazing shape In their eyes, as if such could have cauterized The trust they turned towards him, and branded on Its stump her claim, to outlaw question.
So it might have been: seeing their exemplar And teacher burned for his lessons to black bits, Their silence might have disowned him to her, And hung up what he had taught with their Welsh hats: Who sees his blasphemous father struck by fire From heaven, might well be heard to speak no oaths.
But the fire that struck here, come from Hell even, Kindled little heavens in his words As he fed his body to the flame alive. Words which, before they will be dumbly spared, Will burn their body and be tongued with fire Make paltry folly of flesh and this world’s air.
When they saw what annuities of hours And comfortable blood he burned to get His words a bare honouring in their ears, The shrewd townsfolk pocketed them hot: Stamp was not current but they rang and shone As good gold as any queen’s crown.
Gave all he had, and yet the bargain struck To a merest farthing his whole agony, His body’s cold-kept miserdom on shrieks He gave uncounted, while out of his eyes, Out of his mouth, fire like a glory broke, And smoke burned his sermon into the skies.
Some contrived, some entirely accidental. They make a kind of ‘poetic’ sense. The brain can’t help but make associations. I think of them as unruly haikus. (They are way off the required syllable count.)
Cod Very Like a Whale but beautiful
The White Goddess Weeds New Grub Street
Last Friends Waiting for the Barbarians In Patagonia
Philosophy 1 Metaphysics The Inland Voyage
Black Swan Green Loving Cony Catchers and Bawdy Baskets
The Long March Death at Intervals Rule of the Bone
Lucy Interpreter of Maladies On the Road
Junky Annie John At the Bottom of the River
Bonnie and Clyde Trout fishing in America Cooking for Crowds
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love French Cheeses The Adventures of Dougal
Ulysses Surfacing One Moonlit night
All my Sons Wild Mosquitos
The House of Whacks Sex Habits of American Women A Study in Scarlet
Bandits of Cisterna Alamut The Magick of Thelema
Rabbit Rich V. Rigadoon
Ratman of Paris In the Skin of a lion Eisenstein
Wide Sargasso Sea Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid Mimes et poètes antiques
The Red Widow Murders The White Priory Murders Forbidden Colours
The Painted Word Nederlands zilver The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
Some Prefer Nettles Training the young horse Cults: faith, healing and Coercion
Desperate characters On Chesil Beach Beyond Desire
We Fought them in Gunboats Mr Stone and the Knights Companion Lord Malquist & Mr Moon
The Witch’s Daughter Reading the Cantos Being good
Colette A Girl at the Helm Innocent Libertine
The Long Song Nothing Like the Sun In the Heart of the Sea
A Dead Man In Deptford The Castle of Crossed Destinies Conundrum
Bluff What Life Could Mean to You The Politics of Jesus
Listen to Danger A Lesson before dying Terrorist
The Kidnapped King The Prince Dragon Captives
On the Black Hill The Yellow House A Parcel of Trees
South Moon Under Sands of Mars Desert Solitaire
People of the Deer The Charging Buffalo From Adversaries to Comrades-In-Arms
A History of Spanish Firearms Comrades Men without women
Lucy Save me the Waltz The Price of my Soul
Hilbert Working With Singing Bowls Interaction Ritual
A High Wind in Jamaica A House Unlocked Muses Are Heard
Jane Steele Girl, 20 Love’s Executioner
Heed the Thunder Signalman’s Apprentice To Sunset and Beyond
Marx Cooking with Wine Civilization and Capitalism
The Veiled Sun Transparent Things Pursuit of Signs
Recipes from the White Hart Inn Everlasting Syllabub and the Art of Carving The Chef at War
Graceland Consumption The Favourite Game
The Great ship from Amacon Bloody Sun at Noon The Living and the Dead
The Tiger’s Wife Dreams from Bunker Hill The Spoilt Kill
From Ritual to Romance The Story of Juliette The Elusive Embrace
Book of Ireland Folk Tales of the Borders The Gipsy’s Baby
The Singing Sands The Stones of Venice The divers of Acapulco
God Is Not Great When You Are Engulfed In Flames The Black Death
Guns, Germs & Steel Politics Murder, Inc.
The Tiger’s Wife No Beast So Fierce Without Feathers
The English Opium-Eater A Taste of the Sun Narcopolis
The Three Hostages Theory of War The Ideas behind the Chess Opening
Billiards at Half-Past Nine 41 Degrees Fearless Symmetry
The British Museum is Falling Down Picture The Mermaids in the Basement
Sun Came Down Between the World and Me I’m Gone
Access To History: The British Empire, 1815-1914 Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism The Anatomy of Disgust
Troubles Running in the Family Way of the World
The Last of England Lions and Shadows 1066 And All That
Henri Rousseau Scenes from the Back of Beyond The Jungle
Pigeon Flight to Arras Distant Water
I, Leonardo Borrobil Shart
The Monkey’s wrench Springhaven The Catcher in the Rye
Pleasant Valley Scenes of Clerical Life The Blind Watchmaker
A Glass of Blessings Cider with Rosie Portable Utopia
Clandestine in Chile The French Lieutenant’s Woman Envisioning Information
Tobacco Road Nicotiana tabacum Light Years
Hell’s Angels A Long Way from Verona O Pioneers!
The Porcupine Views His First Kangaroo
Emperor Julian Spellbound Soldier of the Great War
Drunkard’s Walk Across the Common The Bay Of Noon
Chairman Rolf Fehlbaum The Man who went into the West Living With Killer Whales, Bald Eagles, and Kwakiutl Indians
Elizabeth and Essex Fiesta That Night
The Worm in the Bud Ladies of Llangollen Geography of the Heart
Radical Evil Little cabbages When Least Is Best
All That Is Wood and Stone Labyrinths
Mr Peanut A Single Man The Outsider
Cock and Bull Amazing Bone Portnoy’s Complaint
Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy Sigmund Freud Invitation To A Beheading
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas The Black Book and the Mob The Devil in the White City
Life on Waller Creek Soldiers’ Pay Black Eagle Child
Mary Reilly The Spirit Woman Dreams from Bunker Hill
Tomorrow in the Battle Think Of Me Picture The Laughing Policeman
Beatrice and Virgil Midnight’s Children Journey to the End of the Night
Notes of a Native Son In Darkest England and The Way Out Hawksmoor
Earth and Water The Sunlight Dialogues The Universe for Beginners
Archipelago Coral Reef Fishes Learning to Dream
Indian Schintzes Japanese Porcelain The Web and the Rock
The American twenties Scarface Al and the Crime Crusaders Murder Michigan
Brazen Head Thomas Willis Up in the Old Hotel
The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of the Great Beings The Gate of Angels Inner Circle
Captain Conan Robinson Crusoe The Discoverers
Clock Without Hands Of light and sounding brass The Infinite Plan
The Plough and the Stars Poetry of resistance in occupied Palestine Today the Struggle
