Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

One of the marks of a great poet is the ability to take a perfectly ordinary object and cast it in an entirely new light. Hughes does this with the thistles of today’s poem - transforming them from humble weeds into a symbol of strength and resistance. As George Macbeth says,

”[Thistles] is a short paean of praise to the unkillable virtue of heroism. By presenting this quality through the nature of part of the vegetable, rather than the animal, kingdom, Hughes contrives to give it an air of naturalness and inevitability, as if heroism like the flowers in spring is something which must go on for ever.”

Of course, the fact that it mentions Icelandic frost and Viking gutturals makes it utterly irresistible to someone like me…

— Thomas

Links

Hughes’ poetry is centred on the natural world, as our previous offerings testify:

‘The Thought Fox’, a poem about being visited by the Muse: poem #98

‘Hawk Roosting’, a depiction of the ruthless egotism of a tyrant: poem #42

Martin once ran a week of poems loosely based on the theme of ‘defiance’; here they are: poem #34, poem #36, poem #38.