Thrushes
Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn,
More coiled steel than living - a
Dark deadly eye, those delicate
Triggered to stirrings beyond sense - with a start, a bounce, a
Overtake the instant and drag out some writhing thing.
No indolent procrastinations and no yawning states,
No sighs or head-scratchings.
Nothing but bounce and stab And a ravening second.
Is it their single-mind-sized skulls, or a trained Body, or genius, or a nestful of
Gives their days this bullet and
Purpose?
Mozart's brain had it, and the shark's
That hungers down the blood-smell even to a leak of its own Side and devouring of itself: efficiency
Strikes too streamlined for any doubt to pluck at
Or obstruction deflect.
With a man it is otherwise.
Heroisms on horseback,
Outstripping his desk-diary at a broad desk,
Carving at a tiny ivory
For years: his act worships itself - while for him,
Though he bends to be blent in the prayer, how loud and above
Furious spaces of fire do the distracting devils Orgy and hosannah, under what wilderness Of black silent waters weep.
Ted Hughes
Other author posts
Hay
The grass is To run like the sea, to be glossed like a mink’s By polishing wind Her heart is the weather
Old Age Gets Up
Stirs its ashes and embers, its burnt An eye powdered over, half melted and solid Ideas that At the first touch of
Wodwo
What am I Nosing here, turning leaves Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edgeI enter water Who am I to
Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed Inaction, no falsifying Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat
