58. The Horses by Ted Hughes - A Friend to Lewi

The Poetry Exchange

In this episode, Lewi talks with us about the poem that has been a friend to him – 'The Horses' by Ted Hughes.​Lewi joined The Poetry Exchange online, via video call, for one of our Lockdown Exchanges. It was in celebration of Manchester Literature Festival, which you can find out more about here:www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.ukLewi is in conversation with Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.Fiona reads 'The Horses'*****The Horses By Ted HughesI climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.Evil air, a frost-making stillness,Not a leaf, not a bird-A world cast in frost. I came out above the woodWhere my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.But the valleys were draining the darknessTill the moorline blackening dregs of the brightening greyHalved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:Huge in the dense grey ten togetherMegalith-still. They breathed, making no move,With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,Making no sound.I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.Grey silent fragmentsOf a grey still world.I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.The curlews tear turned its edge on the silence.Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sunOrange, red, red eruptedSilently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,Shook the gulf open, showed blue,And the big planets hangingI turnedStumbling in a fever of a dream, down towardsThe dark woods, from the kindling tops,And came the horses.There, still they stood,But now steaming, and glistening under the flow of light,Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hoovesStirring under a thaw while all around themThe frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.Not one snorted or stamped,Their hung heads patient as the horizons,High over valleys, in the red levelling raysIn din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,May I still meet my memory in so lonely a placeBetween the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews,Hearing the horizons endure.New Selected Poems by Ted Hughes. Faber & Faber; Main edition (6 Mar. 1995)

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