A Cormorant
Here before me, snake-head.
My waders weigh seven pounds.
My Barbour jacket, mainly necessary
For its pockets, is proof
Against the sky at my back. My bag
Sags with lures and hunter’s medicine enough
For a year in the Pleistocene.
My hat, of use only
If this May relapses into March,
Embarrasses me, and my net, long as myself,
Optimistic, awkward, infatuated
With every twig-snag and fence-barb
Will slowly ruin the day. I paddle
Precariously on slimed shale,
And infiltrate twenty yards
Of gluey and magnetized spider-gleam
Into the elbowing dense jostle-traffic
Of the river’s tunnel, and pray
With futuristic, archaic under-breath
So that some fish, telepathically overpowered,
Will attach its incomprehension
To the bauble I offer to space in general.
The cormorant eyes me, beak uptilted,
Body-snake low — sea-serpentish.
He’s thinking: “Will that stump
Stay a stump just while I dive?” He dives.
He sheds everything from his tail end
Except fish-action, becomes fish,
Disappears from bird,
Dissolving himself
Into fish, so dissolving fish naturally
Into himself. Re-emerges, gorged,
Himself as he was, and escapes me.
Leaves me high and dry in my space-armour,
A deep-sea diver in two inches of water.
(Ted Hughes from A River, 1983)
5 comments:
A nice moment of humorous self-deprecation, there, from yer man, Ted, on behalf of our whole species. Fishing brings out the best in him. His "River" collection has become one my favourites -- I used to dislike it because I had the original edition illustrated with some awful photographs.
Mike
Have you just accepted the photos or somehow manage to ignore them?
I read an essay about Hughes and this collection is seen as one of his finest - I only really know some from an anthology. I see that there is another cormorant one in there, "The Rival". I guess I may need to read the whole set.
That's what I like about writing a blog - hopefully (semi) retirement will help me find time to write more - I can work out things I'm interested in and often be pointed towards other things I'm not fully aware of. I take far more notice photographs nowadays, for instance!
. . . but obviously not my editing skills! I meant "of" photographs.
No, I bought a copy of the current paperback -- just the poems -- which is much better.
I had a phase of collecting TH hardback 1st editions, esp. if illustrated by Leonard Baskin (love his work), and bought River despite the awful "Come to Devon!" calendar-style photos (by Peter Keen).
Mike
Okay, thanks, Mike. I'll investigate the current paperback. I tend to think woodcuts would work better for TH.
Post a Comment