POEM: DAWN’S ROSE
by contemplativeinquiry
Dawn’s rose
Is melting an old frost moon.
Agony under agony, the quiet of dust,
And a crow talking to stony skylines.
Desolate is the crow’s puckered cry
As an old woman’s mouth
When the eyelids have finished
And the hill’s continue.
A cry
Wordless
As a newborn baby’s grieving
On the steely scales.
As the dull gunshot and its after-râle
Among conifers, in rainy twilight.
Or the suddenly dropped, heavily dropped
Star of blood on the fat leaf.
Ted Hughes, in Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 1972
contemplativeinquiry 