Eagle Poem
Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self 

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can't see, can't hear;

Can't know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren't always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a 

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

____________________________________________________________________

King of Carrion
Ted Hughes


His palace is of skulls.

His crown is the last splinters
Of the vessel of life.

His throne is the scaffold of bones, the hanged thing's
Rack and final stretcher.

His robe is the black of the last blood.

His kingdom is empty—

The empty world, from which the last cry
Flapped hugely, hopelessly away
Into the blindness and dumbness and deafness of the gulf

Returning, shrunk, silent

To reign over silence.

Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days
Ted Hughes


She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air 
                                                       and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him,
                             and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, 
                                          they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine,
                                     he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that,
                             using it and laughing incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, 
                                                       all shiningly oiled

He is polishing every part,
                                   he himself can hardly believe it

They keel taking each other to the sun,
                                            they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step
And now she smooths over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat,
                        her breasts and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying their roots
                                         to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips
She stitches his body here and there
                                                 with steely purple silk
He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth
She inlays with deep-cut scrolls the nape of his neck
He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care

They bring each other to perfection.

Lovesong
Ted Hughes


He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones 
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors 
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

Crow's Song of Himself
Ted Hughes


When God hammered Crow
He made gold
When God roasted Crow in the sun
He made diamond
When God crushed Crow under weights
He made alcohol
When God tore Crow to pieces
He made money
When God blew Crow up
He made day
When God hung Crow on a tree
He made fruit
When God buried Crow in the earth
He made man
When God tried to chop Crow in two
He made woman
When God said: 'You win, Crow,'
He made the Redeemer.

When God went off in despair
Crow stropped his beak and started in on the two thieves.

Crow's Undersong
Ted Hughes


She cannot come all the way

She comes as far as water no further

She comes with the birth push
Into eyelashes into nipples the fingertips
She comes as far as blood and to the tips of hair
She comes to the fringe of voice
She stays
Even after life even among the bones

She comes singing she cannot manage an instrument
She comes too cold afraid of clothes
And too slow with eyes wincing frightened
When she looks into wheels

She comes sluttish she cannot keep house
She can just keep clean
She cannot count she cannot last

She comes dumb she cannot manage words
She brings petals in their nectar fruits in their plush
She brings a cloak of feathers an animal rainbow
She brings her favourite furs and these are her speeches

She has come amorous it is all she has come for

If there had been no hope she would not have come

And there would have been no crying in the city

(There would have been no city)

Owl's Song
Ted Hughes


He sang
How the swan blanched forever
How the wolf threw away its telltale heart
And the stars dropped their pretence
The air gave up appearances
Water went deliberately numb
The rock surrendered its last hope
And cold died beyond knowledge

He sang
How everything had nothing more to lose

Then sat still with fear

Seeing the clawtrack of star
Hearing the wingbeat of rock

And his own singing

Robin Song
Ted Hughes


I am the hunted king
     Of the frost and big icicles
          And the bogey cold
          With its wind boots.

I am the uncrowned
     Of the rainworld
          Hunted by lightning and thunder
          And rivers.

I am the lost child
     Of the wind
          Who goes through me looking for something else
          Who can't recognize me though I cry.

I am the maker
     Of the world
          That rolls to crush
          And silence my knowledge.

Crow and the Birds
Ted Hughes


When the eagle soared clear through a dawn distilling of emerald
When the curlew trawled in seadusk through a chime of wineglasses
When the swallow swooped through a woman's song in a cavern
And the swift flicked through the breath of a violet

When the owl sailed clear of tomorrow's conscience
And the sparrow preened himself of yesterday's promise
And the heron laboured clear of the Bessemer upglare
And the bluetit zipped clear of lace panties
And the woodpecker drummed clear of the rotovator and the rose-farm
And the peewit tumbled clear of the laundromat

While the bullfinch plumped in the apple bud
And the goldfinch bulbed in the sun
And the wryneck crooked in the moon
And the dipper peered from the dewball

Crow spraddled head-down in the beach-garage, guzzling a dropped ice-cream.

Examination at the Womb-door
Ted Hughes


Who owns these scrawny little feet?      Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face?      Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs?      Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles?      Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts?      Death.
Who owns these questionable brains?      Death.
All this messy blood?      Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes?      Death.
This wicked little tongue?      Death.
This occasional wakefulness?      Death.

Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.

Who owns this whole rainy, stony earth?      Death.
Who owns all of space?      Death.

Who is stronger than hope?      Death.
Who is stronger than the will?      Death.
Stronger than love?      Death.
Stronger than life?      Death.

But who is stronger than death?
                                                  Me, evidently.


Pass, Crow.

Lineage
Ted Hughes


In the beginning was Scream
Who begat Blood
Who begat Eye
Who begat Fear
Who begat Wing
Who begat Bone
Who begat Granite
Who begat Violet
Who begat Guitar
Who begat Sweat
Who begat Adam
Who begat Mary
Who begat God
Who begat Nothing
Who begat Never
Never Never Never

Who begat Crow

Screaming for Blood
Grubs, crusts
Anything

Trembling featherless elbows in the nest's filth

Two Legends
Ted Hughes


I
Black was the without eye
Black the within tongue
Black was the heart
Black the liver, black the lungs
Unable to suck in light
Black the blood in its loud tunnel
Black the bowels packed in furnace
Black too the muscles
Striving to pull out into the light
Black the nerves, black the brain
With its tombed visions
Black also the soul, the huge stammer
Of the cry that, swelling, could not
Pronounce its sun.

II
Black is the wet otter's head, lifted.
Black is the rock, plunging in foam.
Black is the gall lying on the bed of the blood.

Black is the earth-globe, one inch under,
An egg of blackness
Where sun and moon alternate their weathers

To hatch a crow, a black rainbow
Bent in emptiness
                            over emptiness

But flying

If I Wanted A Boat
Mary Oliver


I would want a boat, if I wanted a
boat, that bounded hard on the waves,
that didn't know starboard from port
and wouldn't learn, than welcomed
dolphins and headed straight for the
whales, that, when rocks were close,
would slide in for a touch or two,
that wouldn't keep land in sight and
went fast, that leaped into the spray.
What kind of life is it always to plan
and do, to promise and finish, to wish
for the near and the safe? Yes, by the
heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want
a boat I couldn't steer.

Love Song
Denise Levertov


Your beauty, which I lost sight of once
for a long time, is long,
not symmetrical, and wears
the earth colors that make me see it.

A long beauty, what is that?
A song
that can be sung over and over,
long notes or long bones.

Love is a landscape the long mountains
define but don't
shut off from the
unseeable distance.

In fall, in fall,
your trees stretch
their long arms in sleeves
of earth-red and

sky-yellow, a little
lop-sided. I take 
long walks among them. The grapes
that need frost to ripen them

are amber and grow deep in the
hedge, half-concealed,
the way your beauty grows in long tendrils
half in darkness.

Words
Sylvia Plath


Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the centre like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road—

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.

The Oak Tree Loves Patience
Mary Oliver


The oak tree
      loves patience,
the mountain is
      still looking,

as it has for centuries,
      for a word to say about
the gradual way it
      slides itself

back to the
      world below
to begin again,
      in another life,

to be fertile.
      When the wind blows
the grass
      whistles and whispers

in myths and riddles
      and not in our language
but one far older.
      The sea is the sea is

always the sea.
      These things
you can count on
      as you walk about the world

happy or sad,
      talky or silent, making
weapons, love, poems.
      The briefest of fires.

Adlestrop
Edward Thomas


Yes. I remember Adlestrop—

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

Storms River:
Chaos Theory
C. J. Driver


     I watch the winter waves all day
To guess the places they'll start to gather up
And lift, and lift so slowly to the cusp
     Which hangs a moment as it breaks
In sudden downward curve of lighter green
     Before the backward spray of spume
          Which tags the wave
Appends a rainbow briefly to its edge.

     Though gravity has not yet trapped
The further stars in ordered evidence
(For light allows I may not see them now
     Where curves the fleeting universe)
This random music in my head includes
     The rainbow, cusp and spray,
          The light and stars,
The wave's return, the certain night to come.

Wilderness:
Written on Water
C. J. Driver


The sheen of dying wind
Across the lake —
The darkling light
As light delights the air
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)

The web of weaving wind
Across the lake —
The water light
Of silver shining air
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)

We think of something lost
In writing down
The flux of time:
But what completes our thought?
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)

The thread of meaning lost
In noting down
That fleeting time:
Precise the moment caught
(The language knows so much beyond oneself)