Week #13—Sign Inventory

Horoscope

            by Ted Hughes

You wanted to study

Your stars—the guards

Of your prison yard, their zodiac. The planets

Muttered their Babylonish power-sprach—

Like a witchdoctor’s bones. Your were right to fear

How loud the bones might roar,

How clear an ear might hear

What the bones whispered

Even embedded as they were in the hot body.

Only you had no need to calculate

Degrees for your ascendant disruptor

in Aires. It meant nothing certain—no more

According to the Babylonian book

Than a scarred face. How much deeper

Under the skin could any magician peep?

You only had to look

Into the nearest face of a metaphor

Picked out of your wardrobe or off your plate

Or out of the sun or the moon or the yew tree

To see your father, your mother, or me

Bringing you your whole Fate.

Dialogic tone: “You” and “me”.

Sporadic rhymes: “stars” and “guards” in one line, “fear” and “hear” in first verse; “disruptor” and “more” appear in two consecutive lines, as do “deeper” and “peep” in second verse; the “or” of “metaphor” in line 17 rhymes with “your” in line 18 and “or” in lines 19 and 20, “me” in line 20 rhymes with “me” in line 20, “plate” in line 18 rhymes with “Fate” in line 21, where “your” also picks up the rhyme of the four preceding lines.

English-German word coupling in "power-sprach."

Verse structure of 9—6—6 lines.

Enjambment with capitalized first letters of each line.

References to “Babylonian book” lend a historical, even palimpsest quality.

The repetition of the word “bones” provides a macabre element to the tone of the poem.

Metaphor of “stars” as “prison guards.”

Personification of “bones” that “roar” and whisper.