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It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot.
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.

— Ted Hughes Lupercal (1960)

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More quotes by Ted Hughes

We now give more serious weight to the words of a country's poets than to the words of its politicians — though we know the latter may interfere more drastically with our lives.

Poetry International Programme note (1967)

However rootedly national it may be, poetry is less and less the prisoner of its own language.

Poetry International Programme note (1967)

The idea of global unity is not new, but the absolute necessity of it has only just arrived, like a sudden radical alteration of the sun, and we shall have to adapt or disappear.

Poetry International Programme note (1967)

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument.

Lupercal (1960)

The deeps are cold:
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.

Lupercal (1960)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ted Hughes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.