TED HUGHES PLAQUE
The plaque is mounted on the front facing wall of the house where Ted Hughes was born on 17th. August 1930, No 1 Aspinall Street, Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 following the death of John Betjeman (Philip Larkin had declined an invitiation), following his death aged 68 years in 1998 he was followed in this ancient post by Andrew Motion, looking it up I see that the first Poet Laureate was one Richard Canonicus appointed by King Richard I at the end of the 12th. century, not all laureates who followed are much remembered or read today, Ted Hughes will I fancy and hope, be an exception.
JAGUAR
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut
Fatigue with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor's coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty
Or stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerised
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurringy enraged
Through the prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom -
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear -
He spins from the bars, but there's no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell
His stride is wilderness of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
Ted Hughes 1930-1998.
TED HUGHES PLAQUE
The plaque is mounted on the front facing wall of the house where Ted Hughes was born on 17th. August 1930, No 1 Aspinall Street, Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 following the death of John Betjeman (Philip Larkin had declined an invitiation), following his death aged 68 years in 1998 he was followed in this ancient post by Andrew Motion, looking it up I see that the first Poet Laureate was one Richard Canonicus appointed by King Richard I at the end of the 12th. century, not all laureates who followed are much remembered or read today, Ted Hughes will I fancy and hope, be an exception.
JAGUAR
The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut
Fatigue with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor's coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty
Or stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerised
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurringy enraged
Through the prison darkness after the drills of his eyes
On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom -
The eye satisfied to be blind in fire,
By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear -
He spins from the bars, but there's no cage to him
More than to the visionary his cell
His stride is wilderness of freedom:
The world rolls under the long thrust of his heel
Over the cage floor the horizons come.
Ted Hughes 1930-1998.