Tuesday, October 3, 2023

"Night Arrival of Sea-Trout" by Ted Hughes


Night Arrival of Sea-Trout


Honeysuckle hanging her fangs.
Foxglove rearing her open belly.
Dogrose touching the membrane.

Through the dew’s mist, the oak’s mass
Comes plunging, tossing dark antlers.

Then a shattering
Of the river’s hole, where something leaps out –

An upside-down, buried heaven
Snarls, moon-mouthed, and shivers.

Summer dripping stars, biting at the nape.
Lobworms coupling in saliva.
Earth singing under her breath.

And out in the hard corn a horned god
Running and leaping
With a bat in his drum.




Source of the text - Ted Hughes, Poems, Selected by Simon Armitage. London: Faber & Faber, 2000, page 89.

TJB: A fish is caught, defined in a series of image-actions in curt sentence fragments: wild & dangerous, tamed perhaps by the poet-angler. Who’s the god?
 
 
 

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