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Megalithic Poems
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Littlestone
Littlestone
5386 posts

Ted Hughes: Snipe
Oct 27, 2006, 13:05
Snipe

You are soaked with the cold rain -
Like a pelt in tanning liquor.
The moor's swollen waterbelly
Swags and quivers, ready to burst at a step.

Suddenly
Some scrap of dried fabric rips
Itself up
From the marsh-quake, scattering. A soft

Explosion of twilight
In the eyes, with spinning fragment
Somewhere. Nearly lost, wing flash

Stab-trying escape routes, wincing
From each, ducking under
And flinging up over -

Bowed head, jockey shoulders
Climbing headlong
As if hurled downwards -

A mote in the watery eye of the moor -
Hits cloud and
Skis down the far rain wall

Slashes a wet rent
in the rain-duck
Twisting out sideways -

rushes his alarm

Back to the ice age.

The downpour helmet
Tightens on your skull, riddling the pools,
Washing the standing stones and fallen shales
With empty nightfall.

Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
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Megalithic Poems (Littlestone)
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