‘in the end, with the heaven-sent girl’ – Ted Hughes, Prometheus on His Crag

Sodden underfoot the flooded marsh at last

Meets the rock shaped like a shout of frozen flame.

He has outlived his brother

Who outlived the vulture

Who swallowed the sun;

There are dark marks about his eyes.

He has been drinking. Only a trickle.

Crowned with the human gift, a hind:

A stag of antenna, an old sock, a wind chime.

Only a jangle of ephemera.

She pads to an old washed up fridge box

Door hanging rust-scorched from its hinges.

There is no hum like the soft bodies of bees meeting.

Her soft nose nuzzles his side

Her paraphernalia slices an ancient liver spot.

Cuts skin like a box-cutter.

___

DANIEL HINDS lives in Newcastle, UK. He won the Poetry Society’s Timothy Corsellis Young Critics Prize. He was shortlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Award. His poetry was commended in the National Centre for Writing’s UEA New Forms Award and has been published, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The New European, Wild Court, Stand, Southword, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prairie Fire, New Contrast, Carousel, and Shearsman, and broadcast on BBC platforms. Twitter: @DanielGHinds