Earth-Moon

by Ted Hughes

Once upon a time there was a person

He was walking along

He met the full burning moon

Rolling slowly twoards him

Crushing the stones and houses by the wayside.

She shut his eyes from the glare.

He drew his dagger

And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.

The cry that quit the moon's wounds

Circled the earth.

The moon shrank, like a punctured airship,

Shrank, shrank, smaller, smaller,

Till it was nothing

But a silk handkerchief, torn,

And wet as tears.

The person picked it up. He walked on

Into moonless night

Carrying his strange trophy.

Wind 

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 

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. 

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as

The coal-house door. Once I looked up -

Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes

The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope, 

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,

At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;

The wind flung a magpie away and a black-

Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house 

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note

That any second would shatter it. Now deep

In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip

Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought, 

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,

And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,

Seeing the window tremble to come in,

Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

The Harvest Moon

The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,

Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,

A vast balloon,

Till it takes off, and sinks upward

To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.

The harvest moon has come,

Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.

And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can't sleep,

So they go out where elms and oak trees keep

A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.

The harvest moon has come!

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep

Stare up at her petrified, while she swells

Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing

Closer and closer like the end of the world.

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat

Cry `We are ripe, reap us!' and the rivers

Sweat from the melting hills.

Lovesong

He loved her and she loved him

His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to

He had no other appetite

She bit him she gnawed him she sucked

She wanted him complete inside her

Safe and Sure forever and ever

Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away

Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows

He gripped her hard so that life

Should not drag her from that moment

He wanted all future to cease

He wanted to topple with his arms round her

Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press

To print him into her bones

His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place

Where the real world would never come

Her smiles were spider bites

So he would lie still till she felt hungry

His word were occupying armies

Her laughs were an assasin's attempts

His looks were bullets daggers of revenge

Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets

His whispers were whips and jackboots

Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing

His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway 

Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks

And their deep cries crawled over the floors

Like an animal dragging a great trap

His promises were the surgeon's gag

Her promises took the top off his skull

She would get a brooch made of it

His vows pulled out all her sinews 

He showed her how to make a love-knot

At the back of her secret drawer

Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves

Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs

In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face.