A Flayed Crow in the Hall of Judgement
A Ted Hughes poem…he seemed to have an affinity with crows…A Flayed Crow has foothills, then up, then the summit
All darkness comes together, rounding an egg.
Darkness in which there is now nothing.
A blot has knocked me down. It clogs me.
A globe of blot, a drop of unbeing.
Nothingness came close and breathed on me – a frost
A shawl of annihilation curls me up like a shrimpsfish foetus
Am I the self of some spore?
I rise beyond height -I fall past falling
I float on a nowhere
As mist-balls float, and as stars
A condensation, a gleam simplification
Of all that pertained
This cry alone struggles in its tissues.
Where am I going? What will come of me here?
Is this everlasting? Is it
Stoppage and the start of nothing?
Or am I under attention?
Do purposeful cares incubate me?
Am I the self of some spore?
What feathers shall I have?
Is this the white of death blackness,
This yoke of afterlife?
What feathers shall I have? What is my weakness
Good for? Great fear
Rests on the thing I am, as a feather on a hand.
I shall not fight
Against whatever is allotted to me.
My soul skinned, ad my soul-skin pinned out
A mat for my judges.