Phaetons
Angrier, angrier, suddenly the near-madman In mid-vehemence rolls back his eye And lurches to his feet – Under each sense the other four hurtle and thunder Under the skull’s front the horses of the sun The gentle reader in his silent room Loses the words in mid-sentence – The world has burned away beneath his book A tossing upside-down team drags him on fire Among the monsters of the zodiac.
Phaetons - meaning Summary
Reading Beyond Control
The poem imagines reading as a dangerous loss of control. A reader is overtaken by forces beneath ordinary consciousness, figured as the sun horses driven by Phaethon in Greek myth. As the familiar world vanishes, the reader is pulled into a fiery, upside-down cosmic journey. Hughes links mental agitation, physical sensation, and mythic catastrophe to suggest that language can unleash overwhelming inner energies.
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