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Green Mother and Brooktrout by Ted Hughes

This article is more than 20 years old

Throughout a writing career that spanned the second half of the 20th century, Ted Hughes (1930-1998) retained an active interest in the publishing process. Alongside the individual collections that established his reputation, from The Hawk in the Rain to Birthday Letters, he produced numerous broadsides, pamphlets and limited editions, with an assortment of small presses and imprints, often in collaboration with friends and family. Many of these poems have never before been collected. "Green Mother" first appeared in the Boston University Journal in 1976, and is an early version of "A Green Mother" (Cave Birds, 1978). "Brooktrout" was a Morrigu Press broadside, printed by Hughes's son Nicholas in June 1979. It was later included in Under the North Star (1981).

Green Mother

I am the pillow where angels come for the sleeper.

Grey-long-eyed and silvery-limbed, a tremor, a girl, strong-fingered
With the washed voice of a thrush,
Glistening wet - the angle of the ash

A toppling tower of gargoyles and ogres -
With a voice of splitting, a sulphur-glare
And a numbness
The angel of the oak lifts his trophy

Slow and charred from the furnace, in red-oiled strength,
Crippled with overcoming, the angel of the yew
Cradles the molten dove, which is his voice.

Every flower sends an angel.

And the worm leans down - A forgiving God.

And you shall climb with the angels
Of the insects - the trembling hosts of light
The chivalry of sun and moon
On the field of the leaf.

And from heaven to heaven
You shall enter the heaven of the birds - the trumpets
The heaven of the beasts - who labour in the foundations
The heaven of the fish - banners in the long flame
Of the beginning

Many heavens, none of them fallen.

Do not think I am the stone of the grave.

I pillow the face of everliving.

Lie down - rejoice!
among roots, among mouths.

Brooktrout

The Brooktrout, superb as a matador,
Sways invisible there
In water empty as air.

The Brooktrout leaps, gorgeous as a jaguar,
But dropping back into swift glass
Resumes clear nothingness.

The numb-cold current's brain-wave is lightning -
No good shouting: 'Look!'
It vanished as it struck.

You can catch Brooktrout, a goggling gewgaw -
But never the flash God made
Drawing the river's blade.

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