Tree

A priest from another land
Fulminated
Against heather, stones and wild water.

Excommunicated the clouds
Damned the wind
Cast the bog pools into outer darkness
Smote the horizons
With the jawbone of emptiness

Till he ran out of breath —

In that teetering moment
Of lungs empty
When only his eye-water protected him
He felt
Heaven and earth moving.

And words left him.
Mind left him. God left him.

Transfigured, bowed —
The lightening conductor
Of a maiming glimpse — the new prophet

Grasped a cry

Ted Hughes