Michael Longley: The Horses

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

The Horses

Weather in Japan, London: Jonathan Cape, 2000

260

Length / Form 11 lines - language connects to World War I - 'Shell-shocked'

Relationship to Classical text The Iliad 17. The notional occasion for the poem is pointed up in the reference in the third line to the memorial for horses killed in war. This alludes to the contemporary campaign for such a memorial. Longley then inverts chronology by claiming the best memorial exists in Homer. However, the first two and a half lines of the poem clearly locate the suffering of the horses in the butchery of twentieth-century wars. These are images of death associated with the human suffering depicted in the poetry of Charles Sorley, Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen. In his poem ‘Wounds’ Longley focuses on the slaughter of the Ulster Division on the Somme in World War 1 and the lasting trauma caused to survivors, including his father.