48 FOUR. POEMS SMALL EVENTS The old man's blood had spoken the word "Enough." Now nohody had the heart to see him go on. His photographs were a cold mercy, there on the mantel So his 11louth becdme a buttonhole and his limbs became wrapped iron. Towards dying, his eyes looked just above the things he looked at, For they were the poor rearguard on the beach, And turned, watering, with all his hope, frolll the smoke To the Sea for the Sa viour "-'-ho is useful only in life. So, under a tree, a tree-creeper, on dead grass sleeplng- It was blind, its e} es matte as blood-lice Feeding on a raw face of disease. I set it on dry grass and ItS head fell forward; it died Into what 11lust have cupped it kindly. And a gray, aged mouse humped shivering On the bare path, under November drizzle- A frail parcel, delivered in damaging mail and still unclaimed, Its contents no longer of use to anybody. I picked it up. It was looking neither inward nor outward. The tremendous 111 usic of its atoms Trembled it on my fingers. As I watched it, it died- A gray, mangy mouse, and seamed with ancient scal s, 'Vhose blood had said "Sleep." So this year a swift's embryo, cracked too early from its fallen egg- There, among mineral fragments, The blind blood stirred, Freed, And, mystified, sank into hopeful sleep. YOU DRIVE IN A CIRCLE Slowly a hundred 111iles through the powerful rain. Your clothes are tuwellcd with sweat and the car glass swea ts, And there is a smell of damp dog Rain-sog is rotting your shoes to paper. Over old hairy 111001 s, a dark i\.rctic depth, cresting under r1.In, 'Vhere the road topples, plunging with its crazed rigging Like a rackety iron tanker Into a lunge of spray, emerges agaIn- Through hard rendIngs of water, Drowned eyes at the melting windshield, . tItles But who are 7.ve? "Tho am I?" " L k . 1 . " I d 00 at It t 1IS waV, suggeste, trying to be helpful. "In two years, you'l] be in COlllmand and your trou- bles will be over." "But that's just it, they won't be," Charlie said, mournfully shaking his head. "By then, it won't be called Out above the swa111ped 11100r-wallows, the mist gulfs of no-thinking. Down in there are the sheep, rooted like sponges, Chewing and digesting and undeterred. "'That could they lose, however utterly they drowned Already sodden as they are with the world, like fossils? And what is not the world is God, a starry comforter of good blood. Where are you headIng? Everything is already here. Your hardest look cannot anchor out among these rocks, your coming days cannot anchor alllong these torn clouds that cannot anchor. Your destination waits where you left it. THAW Who'll read off the pulsings of thaw? Or calibrate COlllbustion of the ll1aniac's nerve? Or apprdise The damp straw's prayer to the sunrise? In the fever ward, a pilJow deepens, The Universe thickens to nUl11bness, fumbled By the huge lips of a phanto111. But already the lambs totter out and are apt, And the Allllighty's crept into snowdrops, where he'll be believed. The star litter is all that's left Of his broken barometer. The swollen statistics of anguish Are jumbled and lost in the \-'oices of water. FERN Here is the fern's frond, unfurling a gesture, Like a conductor whose 111 usic wil1 now be pause And the one note of silence To which the whole earth ddnces gravely- A dancer, leftover, among crumbs and relllains Of God's drunken supper, Dancing to start things up again. And they do start up-to the one note of silence The mouse's ear unfurls its trust, The spIder takes up her bequest, And the retina Reins the Creation with a bridle of water How man) went under? EverythIng up to this point went under. Now they start up again Dancing gravely, like the plume Of a warrior returning, under the low hills, Into his own kingdom. -TED HUGHES . the COlllmand Generation anymore. I 11lean, whenever I arrive at an age, it somehow stops being an age. J was never in the Younger Generation, for instance, but just one of the kids under- foot. All of us who are In our thirties today were young in the Depression, when no one, not even the Lúce pub- lications, had til11e to think about things like generations. If anything, we were the Shut-up-while-your-father- tries - to - think - of - a - way - to - make - the-payments-on-the-De Soto Genera- tion. So we shut up, and sat quietly in a corner listening to Uncle Don and playing with our Lincoln Logs."