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Poem for September 2007
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By
Miss Gingham, Contributing editor
Saturday,
1 September, 2007
September
We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold:
No clock counts this.
When kisses are repeated and the arms hold
There is no telling where time is.
It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still:
Behind the eye a star,
Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell
Time is nowhere.
We stand; leaves have not timed the summer.
No clock now needs
Tell we have only what we remember:
Minutes uproaring with our heads
Like an unfortunate King's and his Queen's
When the senseless mob rules;
And quietly the trees casting their crowns
Into the pools.
by Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
Ted Hughes was one of England's leading poets of the twentieth century. He was married to the American poet Sylvia Plath (1932-63), author of The Bell Jar and widely regarded as the most talented poet of her generation.
The marriage was volatile: the combination of combined with Plath's unstable temperament, and Hughes' unredeemed mysogyny, led the couple to separate. Plath later committed suicide and was canonised by American feminists. The subsequent fall out has tended to overshadow Hughes' own considerable skill as a poet.
He was Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998. Towards the end of his life (he died from cancer at 68) he published a widely acclaimed translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Their individual work can be purchased from booksellers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble and is included on many university courses. (The Naked Reader recommends The Hawk as a fine example of his early work. )
The Naked Reader 2007
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