Ted Hughes Quotes

Nobody knew the Iron Man had fallen. Night passed.

He swayed in the strong wind that pressed against his back. He swayed forward, on the brink of the high cliff. And his right foot, his enormous iron right foot, lifted-up, out, into space, and the Iron Man stepped forward, off the cliff, into nothingness.

The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.

No, the serpent did not
Seduce Eve to the apple.
All that's simply
Corruption of the facts.<p>Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.<p>The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise—
Smiling to hear
God's querulous calling.

The brassy wood-pigeons
Bubble their colourful voices, and the sun
Rises upon a world well-tried and old.

The deeps are cold:
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.

The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.

Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot.
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly – I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast.

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument.

Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.

The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel.
Over the cage floor the horizons come.

This house has been far out at sea all night, The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills, Winds stampeding the fields under the window Floundering black astride and blinding wet <p> Till day rose; then under an orange sky The hills had new places, and wind wielded Blade-light, luminous black and emerald, Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.