Hoof-trimming

The below is an unpublished poem, written for Moortown, the verse-diary of Ted Hughes’s experiences of farming in Devon in the 1970s, but not included in the sequence as published. A few months after Ted purchased the bull, Sexton, he wrote to his brother Gerald: ‘I really love him. It isn’t just his incredible size and beauty — he has a strange, sweet nature, in every respect like an unusual person.’ Sexton remained at Moortown for many years after his working life, and was buried there in 1991. Some time later his remains were moved to Court Green.
 
The fee for this poem is donated to Farms for City Children


 
Sexton’s hooves are too big. They’ve grown
Like Aladdin’s slippers over winter
Pampered in the mattress of straw-dung
Inside the building. Now he’s out
On a baked east-wind April earth, hobbling
Tender-footed like a sea-bather
Coming back over sharp rocks. He can’t rear up
And balance his gravity on a cow
And wheelbarrow her running under him
As he should be doing.