Ted Hughes - The Shot lyrics

Your worship needed a god. Where it lacked one, it found one. Ordinary jocks became gods – Deified by your infatuation That seemed to have been designed at birth for a god. It was a god-seeker. A god-finder. Your Daddy had been aiming you at God When his d**h touched the trigger. In that flash You saw your whole life. You richocheted The length of your Alpha career With the fury Of a high-velocity bullet That cannot shed one foot-pound Of kinetic energy. The elect More or less died on impact – They were too mortal to take it. They were mind-stuff, Provisional, speculative, mere auras. Sound-barrier events along your flightpath. But inside your sob-sodden Kleenex And your Saturday night panics, Under your hair done this way and that way, Behind what looked like rebounds And the cascade of cries diminuendo, You were undeflected. You were gold-jacketed, solid silver, Nickel-tipped. Trajectory perfect As through ether. Even the cheek-scar, Where you seemed to have side-swiped concrete, Served as a rifling groove To keep you true. Till your real target Hid behind me. Your Daddy, The god with the smoking gun. For a long time Vague as mist, I did not even know I had been hit, Or that you had gone clean through me – To bury yourself at last in the heart of the god. In my position, the right witchdoctor Might have caught you in flight with his bare hands, Tossed you, cooling, one hand to the other, Godless, happy, quieted. I managed A wisp of your hair, your ring, your watch, your nightgown.