— in memory of Ted Hughes

The lightning-flashed hag face of the moor
in the torpor of downpour
and the drizzle-dim skull of Heptanstall

and the curse in the blood of the cursed mud
and Heathcliff’s Mother-wound horror
put thistle in the tongue of Yorkshire

the crashing shires and long haul of mountains
where rock and wind ate at each other
and ached for each other like star-crossed lovers

fossilized in poems whose undersong
was the silkiest hands of farmers
coaxing at the womb door

and the galloping gaiety of the otter
slipping his pelt like a sorcerer
and the river’s unkillable contradictions and seasons

her unkillable children and thunder

in the big double drum of the heart

Eros/Thanatos     Eros/Thanatos     Eros/Thanatos.