Tattoo via Simon Armitage’s book Walking Away, 2015***CHILD’S PARKWhat did they mean to you, the aza
Tattoo via Simon Armitage’s book Walking Away, 2015***CHILD’S PARKWhat did they mean to you, the azaela flowers?Those girls were so happy, rending the branches,Embracing their darling bouquets, their sumptuoustrousseaux,The wet, hot-petalled blossoms. Seizing their day,Having a good time. Your homicidalHooded stare met them head on.As if they were stealing the brandsOf your own burning. I hurried you off. BullfrogsTook you down through lily tangle. Your furyHad to be quenched. Heavy water,Deeper, deeper, cooling and controllingYour plutonium secret. You breathed water.Freed, steadied, resurfaced, your eyesAlit afresh on colour, so delicate,Splitting the prism,As the dragonflies on the solid lilies.The pileated woodpecker went writhingAmong the catalpas. It clungTo undersides and swoopedLike a pterodactyl. The devilryOf the uncoiling head, the spooky wings,And the livid cryFlung the garden open. You were neverMore than a step from Paradise.You had instant access, your analyst told you,To the core of your Inferno–The pit of the hairy flower. At a sunny angleThe fountain threw off its seven veilsAs the air swayed it. Here was your stair–Alchemy’s seven colours.I watched you as you climbed it all on your ownInto the mouth of the azaela.You imagined a veil-rending deflorationAnd a rebirth out of the sun-mixed up togetherAnd somehow the same. You were fearlessTo meet your FatherHis Word fulfilled, there, in the nuclear core.What happens in the heart simply happens.I stepped back. That glareFlinging your old selves off like underthingsLeft your whole Eden radioactive. -–Ted Hughes, in Birthday Letters, 1998 -- source link
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