HOME


The BASICS


• Mass Times


• Sacraments


• Ministries


• Parish Staff


• Consultative Bodies


• Photo Gallery


• Virtual Tour


• History


• Contribute


PUBLICATIONS


• Bulletin


• In Your Midst


• Pastor's Desk


DEPARTMENTS


• Becoming Catholic


• Bookstore


• Faith Formation


• Funerals


• Immigrant Assistance


• Liturgy


• Mental Health


• Music


• Outreach/Advocacy


• Pastoral Care


• Weddings


• Young Adults


• Youth Ministry


PRAYER


KIDS' PAGE


SITE INFO


 

 

That morning
Ted Hughes
 
We came where the salmon were so many
So steady, so spaced, so far-aimed
On their inner map, England could add

Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
Hung with the drumming drift of Lancasters
Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.

Solemn to stand there in the pollen light
Waist-deep in wild salmon swaying massed
As from the hand of God. There the body

Separated, golden and imperishable,
From its doubting thought – a spirit-beacon
Lit by the power of the salmon

That came on, came on, and kept on coming
As if we flew slowly, their formations
Lifting us toward some dazzle of blessing

One wrong thought might darken. As if the fallen
World and salmon were over. As if these
Were the imperishable fish

That had let the world pass away –

There, in a mauve light of drifted lupins,
They hung in the cupped hands of mountains

Made of tingling atoms. It had happened.
Then for a sign that we were where we were
Two gold bears came down and swam like men

Beside us. And dived like children.
And stood in deep water as on a throne
Eating pierced salmon off their talons.

So we found the end of our journey.

So we stood, alive in the river of light,
Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.

  Ted Hughes is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in English of the twentieth century. He is especially known for his nature poetry—Hughes combined a close attention to the detail of the natural world with a sense of its mythic potential, a combination which is evident in much of his work, starting with his first collection, The Hawk in the Rain, published in 1957, and certainly including “That Morning,” which was first published in 1981.

Ted Hughes was a hugely prolific and gifted writer. For many years, his writing was overshadowed by his personal life, which was deeply marked by tragedy. His first wife was the American poet Sylvia Plath, with whom he had two children. She died by her own hand in 1963. Six years later, his mistress Assia Weevil killed herself and her child—Hughes’ daughter. Hughes was constantly questioned about these tragedies, and not infrequently blamed for them. He consistently tried to maintain some degree of privacy about his relationships, especially with Plath, for the sake of his young children, Frieda and Nicholas. In 1970, Hughes married his second wife, Carol Orchard, a union that lasted until his death from cancer in 1998. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984.

In “That Morning,” Hughes writes about an experience while salmon fishing in Alaska. “We came where the salmon were so many,” the poem begins. The “we” here refers to Hughes and his son, Nicholas. After studying biology at Oxford, Nicholas earned a PhD and joined the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he pursued advanced research in salmon ecology. Ted Hughes visited him there, and together they shared the experience described in this poem.  

As I mentioned, for Ted Hughes, the specificity of the natural world, and its mythic potential, go hand in hand. Hughes describes standing in a river during a salmon run. He notices not only the abundance of salmon, but their orderliness. They are “steady,” “spaced” as they follow “their inner map.” The poet notices everything about his surroundings– “the pollen light” in the air, the “mauve” color of the lupins—but at the same time, he is aware that this moment is larger than just a moment in time. It has a vastness to it. It is “solemn to stand there… waist deep in wild salmon,” who seem newly-created, “as from the hand of God.” The salmon flow around the fishermen who stand in the stream, but it is as if the two men are flying, slowly, lifted by the salmon “toward some dazzle of blessing.” Hughes emphasizes the purity, the fragility of this blessing, which “one wrong thought might darken.” This moment is a glimpse of something eternal – “as if the fallen / World and salmon were over.” It is a moment when the usual dichotomies of body and soul, temporal and eternal, went away: “There the body / Separated, golden and imperishable, / From its doubting thought – a spirit-beacon / Lit by the power of the salmon.”

This would be the climax of an ordinary poem: but Hughes was never a poet of understatement! The poem moves to yet another height, and the sense of timelessness, of profound meaning, is extended and intensified. “Then for a sign that we were where we were / Two gold bears came down and swam like men / Beside us. And dived like children. / And stood in deep water as on a throne / Eating pierced salmon off their talons.” The bears feasting upon the salmon are more than bears; they are a “sign,” a word laden with Biblical meaning. These bears are noble: they are golden in the pollen-filled air, “like men,” “like children,” and the water in which they stand becomes a throne.

In the last lines of the poem, Hughes and his son are revealed not as spectators, but as participants in all this glory, “alive in the river of light, / Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.” They are not separate, but part of the life and the light of this place and this moment.

This experience is more than a transcendent moment; it is an arrival. “So we found the end of our journey,” the poet writes. The poem does not let the epiphany fade. It brings us to this recognition, and leaves us there.

One of Hughes’ deepest poetic influences was Gerard Manley Hopkins. The two poets share a love for the natural world in its specificity—what Hopkins called “inscape”—and a deep sense that human beings are not naturally separate from the created world. We are together: “among the creatures of light, creatures of light.” Or as St. Paul put it, “creation itself” will “be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

Ted Hughes died in 1998 after an extraordinary and prolific life, and many volumes of verse, prose, plays, and translations. In 2011, he was honored with a plaque in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey. Of all the thousands of words Hughes wrote, the lines chosen for his memorial are the last lines of “That Morning”: “So we stood, alive in the river of light / Among the creatures of light, creatures of light.”

 

 

 

Return to St. James Cathedral Parish Website

804 Ninth Avenue
Seattle, Washington  98104
Phone 206.622.3559  Fax 206.622.5303