Echoes: Verse 10, Ted Hughes

Theology
by Ted Hughes

No, serpent did not
Seduce Eve to the apple.
All that's simply
Corruption of the facts.

Adam ate the apple.
Eve at Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.

The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise--
Smiling to hear
God's querulous calling.


Hughes, Ted.  "Theology."  Norton Anthology of Poetry.  Ed.  Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005. (1813).

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Examination at the Womb-Door
by Ted Hughes

Who owns these scrawny little feet?  Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lings? 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 the 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 love? Death.


But who is stronger than death?
                                                  Me, evidently.

Pass, Crow.



Hughes, Ted.  "Examination at the Womb-Door."  Norton Anthology of Poetry.  Ed.  Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy.  New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005. (1813-1814).

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Ted Hughes was born in Mtholmroyd, South Yorkshire, England, and was raised in Mesborough, a coal-mining town in South Yorkshire.  He won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, but served two years in the Royal Air Force before matriculating.  He studied English, archeology, and anthropology, specializing in mythological systems (an interest that informed much of his poetry).  He later worked as a gardener, night watchman, zookeeper, scriptwriter, and teacher.  In 1956, he married the American poet Sylvia Plath, and the couple spent a year in the United States before moving to England in 1959.  Plath committed suicide in 1963.  In 1970, Hughes settled on a farm in Devon.  In addition to poetry and books for children.  He also edited numerous collection of verse and prose, and was founding editor of Modern Poetry in Translation magazine.  He was poet laureate of England from 1984 until his death.  His poem vividly describe the beauty of the natural world, but celebrate its raw, elemental energies.  He often embodies the primal forces of nature as mythic animals sch as the pike, the hawk, and "Crow," a central character in a long cycles of poems.  His translation and recasting of Tales from Ovid was published to critical acclaim in 1997, and less than a year later he broke his silence on his relationship with Plath with the publication of Birthday Letters.  He received the Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth II only twelve days before his death, from cancer.