Crow Alights Ted Hughes

Crow saw the herded mountains, steaming in the morning.
___and he saw the sea
Dark-spined, with the whole earth in its coils.
He saw the stars, fuming away into the black, mushrooms of
___the nothing forest, clouding their spores, the virus of God.
And he shivered with the horror of Creation.

In the hallucination of the horror
He saw this shoe, with no sole, rain-sodden,
Lying on a moor.
And there was this garbage can, bottom rusted away,
A playing place for the wind, in a waste of puddles.

There was this coat, in the dark cupboard,
___in the silent room, in the silent house.
There was this face, smoking its cigarette between the dusk
___window and the fire’s embers.

Near the face, this hand, motionless.

Near the hand, this cup.

Crow blinked. He blinked. Nothing faded.

He stared at the evidence.