02/15/14 Lupercalia by Ted Hughes

Lupercalia
by Ted Hughes

                I

The dog loved its churlish life, 
Scraps, thefts. Itsdeclined blood 
An anarchy of mindless pride. 
 Nobody's pet, but good enough

To double with a bitch as poor. 
It had bitten ears and little stone eyes, 
A mouth like an incinerator. 
It held man's reasonable ways

Between its teeth. Received death 
Closed eyes and grinning mouth.

                II

This woman's as from death's touch: a surviving 
Barrenness: she abides; perfect, 
But flung from the wheel of the living, 
The past killed in her, the future plucked out.

The dead are indifferent underground. 
Little the live may learn fromthem— 
A sort of hair and bone wisdom, 
A worn witchcraft accoutrement

Of proverbs. Now the brute's quick 
Be tinder: old spark of the blood-heat 
And not death's touch engross her bed, 
Though that has stripped her stark indeed.

                III

Goats, black, not angels but 
Bellies round as filled wine-skins 
Slung under carcase bones. 
Yet that's not brute light

And no merely mountain light-- 
Their eyes' golden element. 
Rustle of their dry hooves, dry patter, 
Wind in the oak-leaves; and their bent

Horns, stamp, sudden reared stare 
Startle women. Spirit of the ivy, 
Stink of goat, of a rank thriving, 
O mountain-listener.

                IV

Over sand that the sun's burned out 
Thudding feet of the powerful, 
Their oiled bodies brass-bright 
In a drift of dust. The earth's crammed full,

Its baked red bellying to the sky's 
Electric blue. Their attitudes— 
A theorem of flung effort, blades: 
Nothing mortal falters their poise

Though wet with blood: the dog has blessed 
Their fury. Freshthongs of goat-skin 
In their hands they go bounding past, 
And deliberate welts have snatched her in

To the figure of racers. Maker of the world, 
Hurrying the litghost of man 
Age to age while the body hold, 
Touch this frozenone.