Swifts by Ted Hughes Fifteenth of May. Cherry blossom. The swifts Materialise at the tip of a long scream Of needle. 'Look! They're back! Look!' And they're gone On a steep Controlled scream of skid Round the house-end and away under the cherries. Gone. Suddenly flickering in sky summit, three or four together, Gnat-whisp frail, and hover-searching, and listening For air-chills - are they too early? With a bowing Power-thrust to left, then to right, then a flicker they Tilt into a slide, a tremble for balance, Then a lashing down disappearance Behind elms. They've made it again, Which means the globe's still working, the Creation's Still waking refreshed, our summer's Still all to come - And here they are, here they are again Erupting across yard stones Shrapnel-scatter terror. Frog-gapers, Speedway goggles, international mobsters - A bolas of three or four wire screams Jockeying across each other On their switchback wheel of death. They swat past, hard-fletched, Veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof, And are gone again. Their mole-dark labouring, Their lunatic limber scramming frenzy And their whirling blades Sparkle out into blue - Not ours any more. Rats ransacked their nests so now they shun us. Round luckier houses now They crowd their evening dirt-track meetings, Racing their discords, screaming as if speed-burned, Head-height, clipping the doorway With their leaden velocity and their butterfly lightness, Their too much power, their arrow-thwack into the eaves. Every year a first-fling, nearly-flying Misfit flopped in our yard, Groggily somersaulting to get airborne. 40 He bat-crawled on his tiny useless feet, tangling his flails Like a broken toy, and shrieking thinly Till I tossed him up - then suddenly he flowed away under His bowed shoulders of enormous swimming power, Slid away along levels wobbling On the fine wire they have reduced life to, And crashed among the raspberries. Then followed fiery hospital hours tbc. #swiftawarenessweek

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