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Today, on November 23rd, 2009, the site contains 196 poets, 8,692 poems and 7,660 comments.
Ted Hughes - Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her breasts and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stiches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection. 

Added: on April 21st, 2008 at 7:21 AM | Viewed: 2333 times | Comments (1)


Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days - Comments and Information

Poet: Ted Hughes
Poem: Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days

Comment 1 of 1, added on April 21st, 2008 at 7:21 AM.

Ted Huges's Marriage to Silvia Prath was obviously a great obsession. In the poem we witness Hughes’s ‘absolute’ passion, and he sites that he is aware of his ignorance as love has blinded him, and only has eyes for his partner, the rest of the world seems so far away, they literally went missing for three days!
…and the confusion, and the noise of his surroundings had vanished, to find only each others gaze.
I find in this poem an ironic comment on his future studies of Metamorphosis, the re-building of one another’s anatomy becomes a credulous reminder to us all, the importance of appreciation (in a partnership of life,) yet also a aide memoire of our fragility and vulnerability to one other.

Also,
I'm only 22 but I have loved and I swear,
that is just what it feels like!

Brittany Elyse from Australia

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