Ted Hughes (III)

"(...)
And I became aware of the misery
Of your lips, like nothing before in my life.
Their aboriginal thickness. And of your nose,
Broad and Apache, nearly as a boxer's nose,
Scorpio's obverse to the Semitic eagle
That made every camera your enemy,
The jailor of your vanity, the traitor
In your Sexual Dreams Incorporated,
Nose from Attila's horde: a prototype face
That could have looked up at me through the smoke
Of a Navajo campfire. And your small temples
Into which your hair-roots crowded, upstaged
By that glamorous, fashionable bang.
And your little chin, your Pisces chin.
It was never a face in itself. Never the same.
It was like the sea's face - a stage
For weathers and currents, the sun's play and the moon's.
Never a face until that final morning
When it became the face of a child - its scar
Like a Maker's flaw. But now you declaimed
A long poem about a black panther
While I held you and kissed you and tried to keep you
From flying about the room. For all that,
You would not stay.
(...)"

[from: "18 Rugby Street"]