Poetry month 2012. 6: Full Moon and Little Frieda

I am mean about Ted Hughes. On reading his poems my first thought is usually “Yeah yeah, whatever, shut up.”

This may be unfair but it’s true.

I like this one though, even though I find it so very irritating that shrunk and clank don’t rhyme when it would have been so easy. He must have had a reason, right?

     Full Moon and Little Frieda

     A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket –

     And you listening.
     A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch.
     A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror
     To tempt a first star to a tremor.

     Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath –
     A dark river of blood, many boulders,
     Balancing unspilled milk.

     ‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’

     The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work

     That points at him amazed.