Three Voices
The first one mused: 'Funny things, memories.
My brother bowed over his aeroplanes.
I crept out. But I'd left a blood-splash On the shavings. I'd been hewing the brass Off a twelve-bore cartridge. The knife that cut me Had a deer's foot. I found our black cat And hid, nursing it, under my parents' bed.
In the end, they tracked me down by my blood.'
The second thought: 'Is it worth it?' Then aloud: 'The first hawk I ever saw and knew Flew with a small bird in its claw.
Another small bird bounced after it, crying, Towed through the air on an invisible string.' And smiled: 'Something and nothing!'
Then the third: 'A beeswax casque, a delicate Viking prow Lay there, from some sea Vaster than any on earth — — and for all his baby-bird distress at the food I'd tried to spoon into him, and the terror of his look, his stricken, unrecognisable look, that could no longer recognise me — I had to re-launch it. I re-launched it, somehow.
I imagine — out from Flamborough impossibly (So I still cannot get it afloat or light it.)'
Ted Hughes
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