Red | Ted Hughes

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

REQUEST: I'm looking for a specific poem. It was based on the Lady of Shalott, and it was written from her POV. This is the only line I remember:
"While he sits there pontificating on God and grace and mercy and faces."
I've googled, and I have a feeling it's well known, but I just can't seem to find it.
Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Found! Thanks to exceptindreams.

Even though I'm not a fan of some of the Birthday Letters poems, this is one of the best in BL IMO.
 

Red

Red was your colour.

If not red, then white. But red

Was what you wrapped around you.

Blood-red. Was it blood?

Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?

Haematite to make immortal

The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.

 

When you had your way finally

Our room was red. A judgement chamber.

Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood

Patterned with darkenings, congealments.

The curtains – ruby corduroy blood,

Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor.

The cushions the same. The same

Raw carmine along the window-seat.

A throbbing cell. Aztec altar – temple.

 

Only the bookshelves escaped into whiteness.

 

And outside the window

Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail

As the skin on blood,

Salvias, that your father named you after,

Like blood lobbing from a gash,

And roses, the heart’s last gouts,

Catastrophic, arterial, doomed.

 

Your velvet long full skirt, a swathe of blood,

A lavish burgundy.

Your lips a dipped, deep crimson.

You revelled in red.

I felt it raw – like the crisp gauze edges

Of a stiffening wound. I could touch

The open vein in it, the crusted gleam.

 

Everything you painted you painted white

Then splashed it with roses, defeated it,

Leaned over it, dripping roses,

Weeping roses, and more roses,

Then sometimes, among them, a little bluebird.

 

Blue was better for you. Blue was wings.

Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco

Folded your pregnancy

In crucible caresses.

Blue was your kindly spirit – not a ghoul

But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.

 

In the pit of red

You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.

 

But the jewel you lost was blue.

 

 

Comments

[exceptindreams.livejournal.com]

"Lady's Choice"
Dorothy Hewett

So there he is in the mirror again
his armour glistening with tears or rain
and I am expected to leave the room
to take three paces and then go down
to the water's edge where the lilies blow
the boat's turned turtle the bright tides flowing
fast and free but I'm not going
to give myself to that waiting crowd
staring and nudging their thoughts aloud
while he stands there pontificating
on God and mercy and grace and faces
better to turn my back and stare
over the meadows of luminous air
thinking tomorrow I'll get up early
work on my poems and thread my loom
won't talk to strangers be brief and surly
cover the mirror and choose my end
not death in the town round the river's bend
but here cold-hearted alone in my room

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you, that's it!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*swoonTHUD*

OMG, I love this.

[boot-theory.livejournal.com]

i agree about this ted hughes poem... it makes me weep, literally.