Memories, Reflections, Gratitudes. (November 1998).

A celebration of Ted Hughes (published in The Epic Poise, edited by Nick Gammage).

Levelling the air out with his hand,
his huge handsome head held low,
watching me caught in the spiral of words,
living again his own first thrill,
bringing out the marvel of it all.
It was the way he made things magical.
Partly by his childlike sense;
his boyish charged excitedness.
As in our two days at the zoo
when he made a tiger snarl,
paid court to a cockatoo,
and was a gibbon gibbon.
That great roar of laughter,
like his cry for Ha and Golding,
rippling round the rafters
of Salisbury Cathedral.
We changed ties in the Close
so he had the black one and
ate in an empty diner going home.
The way he ruminated over food,
as if an antique mystic thought
passed over in some foreign fare.
Or watching, from his own armchair,
him rewriting Ovid on his knee,
the words just running from his pen,
under the half dim table light,
while we buffooned upon the floor.
Or as he simply sat and read,
rubbing his shingled eye.
Later, out on a walk with him,
falling in with his rise and fall;
it was the way he moved the mud
to let trapped water out to play.
Or, set a subject, as we set out,
with what mastery he wrought it,
endlessly engaging and engaged.
Then, those long drifting drives round Devon,
sometimes at a funeral pace,
reading new poems while he drove along,
questioning what this or that one meant.
We sketched out thirty books and schemes,
testing titles, shouting down the wind
('don't let the bastards get you down')
and piled the dirt on poets, politicians, friends.
He showed me all his ancient haunts,
and his folks me, in Devon and in York,
including the great Aunt Hilda,
and, in time, to most of those he knew
promoting me as agent and as friend.
Then there was his quite distinctive style
of leaning over bridges, his Barbour
hooked on his righthand index finger,
to see how high the water was,
half turned, one foot just off the ground,
pointing at the fish I could not see.
Hares' ears in fields also eluded me.
And that day of mackerel and bream
when the pressure fell below the graph
and, only just, we got inside the bar.
Calling, merely for a chat.'What's new?
What's happened?
Who's with who?'
or a thin message on the answer phone:
'It's only Ted; how are you?
I'll try the other line'.
Oh, we put the world to rights,
ripped up some reputations
and launched high gossip in the air.
Unnumbered rides to restaurants;
police-slow drives, to music, home;
the joy of quaffing rich mens' wine,
revelling in the sheer indulgence of it all.
Three muscateers: Carol, Ted, and me,
raising a glass to luck, and love, and us.
Late mornings; he was always late for meals.
Then our plans for merchant ventures,
him flirting with ideas, new explanations,
History was for living, not to learn,
scholars could keep the record right,
Magic's in a seance, saga, eagles' flight.
And yet how much his history was him.
One secret was the way he'd concentrate,
that word so early - adverbially -
in the famous fox he thought,
seeking out the duende of each thing.
His will to share his world;
to teach, to open up horizons,
making them what you most desired;
like being converted at your own front door.
He opened up so many things for me,
taught me how to train my mind,
and even how to fall asleep.
How wonderful the memories are
of all the pleasures that we shared:
of the bowl of light we once
raised high upon a Devon hill;
or the angel that did truly fly
on a wall in Gloucestershire.
The mighty hand that clasped electric
when we met or went, and his big
slow bull-like turn back into home,
captured in my mirror as I inched out of the lane.
The seance we attended at your healer's house,
with flickering lamps and credulous old ladies,
unsure about the good bits or the fraud
who conjured up wild voices and events.
The walks down rivers, Nature murmuring,
content. Our London lives beneath the radar
and inspection of other peoples' eyes.
Grateful also for your pheremonal smell;
for wild outbursts (letting off your steam);
for being so entirely free with me.
I loved your love of silence
and of the dusk and dawn;
your bible bond with Nature
and the sacred drama of the earth.
Your lion's eye, the hare bone in your ear,
the crush and crashing of the bear.
Your vast capacious mind,
that temple of your inner life;
as visionary, your cell.
The depth of your response,
your heightened sense, your tact,
your quite especial care.
The momentary jealousies;
the human flare, and then
your deep forgiveness, gentleness..
Thank you for your fears about the world
and your dedication to yourself;
for your balance of perfection,
and powerful pursuit of it. For the thrill
of hearing that I'd done a good thing well.
Your brother said I was the brother
you had never had, he had never been.
Thanks for fishing; though I failed.
For having seen you cast
like Merlin laying on a spell.
For your passionate dispassion,
your sympathy; your courage;
your compassion.
For your legend'ry discretion,
and for the times you let me in.
I learned your sense of right and wrong
and felt you wait for me to grow aware.
I am in awe of your Shakespearean mind,
the great arc of your intellect,
your god-like talent and your skill,
the mingling music of your tongue;
your wisdom and your love of life,
your way with words in poems and in prose,
your insight and imagining.
The letters that lit up my days;
poems that made my mind fly free;
prose that forced the bended knee.
You were a purpose in my life;
a solid rock of reference;
still yet a presence in your empty chair.
You were loaned out by the gods,
retained their epic view,
to see the cosmic broadbrush myth
and make mere men rejoice
at the complex complicatedness
of the spirit and the mind.
You were a seer, shaman, friend;
Coleridge-cum-Wordsworth, and yourself.
A loss to Art, you have diminished life
for those you leave bereft behind.
But it is one function of the great
to force on us the contradiction
of whether more to celebrate the work
or lament the life's extinction.
For now, I'll touch on simple benefactions,
on favours unconditionally done,
on comradeship and love assumed,
on your kindness, and for being shy.
And most perhaps for letting me be there,
and being so uniquely mine,
as in other ways, each quite unique,
you touched the lives of many men,
bringing out the best in them.
Your friendship was a miracle to me.
I really cannot comprehend
all that mighty heart is lying still.

Roy Davids