a great poem by ted hughs

God tried to teach Crow how to talk.

"Love," said God. "Say, Love."

Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea

And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth.

"No, no," said God. "Say Love. Now try it. Love."

Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito

Zoomed out and down

To their sundry flesh-pots.

"A final try," said God. "Now, Love."

Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and

Man's bodiless prodigious head

Bulbed out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,

Jabbering protest --

And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.

And woman's vulva dropped over man's neck and tightened.

The two struggled together on the grass.

God struggled to part them, cursed, wept --

Crow flew guiltily off.

Crow Alights

Crow saw the herded mountains, steaming in the morning.

and he saw the sea

Dark-spined, with the whole earth in its coils.

He saw the stars, fuming away into the black, mushrooms of

the nothing forest, clouding their spores, the virus of God.

And he shivered with the horror of Creation.

In the hallucination of the horror

He saw this shoe, with no sole, rain-sodden,

Lying on a moor.

And there was this garbage can, bottom rusted away,

A playing place for the wind, in a waste of puddles.

There was this coat, in the dark cupboard,

in the silent room, in the silent house.

There was this face, smoking its cigarette between the dusk

window and the fire's embers.

Near the face, this hand, motionless.

Near the hand, this cup.

Crow blinked. He blinked. Nothing faded.

He stared at the evidence.

Nothing escaped him. (Nothing could escape.)

Review of Crow


A review of Crow