The thrust of the poem Horns is pain and death. The poet catalogues the misery of a person who is succumbing to AIDS. A plethora of ailments attack the victim relentlessly. Imagery has been vastly employed to enhance
the meaning of the poem through vivid mental pictures. The form and the structure of the poem have been aptly employed to bring out the ideas explored in the poem. Meaning is suggested by the sections and stanzas, with each section focusing on a different aspect of the subject matter.
The first section of the poem expounds extensively on the extended metaphor of “horns” while the second one focuses on other metaphors that describe various health conditions associated with AIDS. Shifting the attention from the specific signs and symptoms of the disease to the metaphor of a “warrior”, the poet manages to create strong images
of the victim. In the fourth section, the poet resumes the inventory of the ailments affecting an AIDS victim.The final section of the poem, section five, creates a lugubrious atmosphere as the poet introduces a gloomy picture of the victim who eventually encounters his demise.
A tactile image of excruciating pain is created by the metaphor of “horns”. Animals with horns use them to inflict injury on their opponents. Those animals gore their enemies in order to defend a territory. As such, horns are used to exert dominance. The poet thus portrays AIDS as a disease that causes pain and much discomfort on the body. The “horns” appearing on the “groins” and in the “armpits” and the neck refer to the lymph nodes that develop as the body responds to the HIV in the blood system. The AIDS sufferer experiences severe respiratory diseases which
the poet captures as “horns whistling”. The “horns” also affect the thinking processes of an individual thus reducing the mental faculties. This is insinuated by the “horns” thatare “burgeoning” the brain. The word “burgeoning” suggests rapid growth. This indicates that the rate at which the AIDS sufferer loses mental faculty is very fast. There is general psychological restlessness which is brought out by the “horns rustling” the spirit. Here the poet points to the fact that the victim goes through stressful times because of the effects of AIDS.
Through a series of similes, the poet creates a sequence of images that paint a miserable picture of the AIDS victim. The simile of “extra gonads” alludes to the prominent size of the lymph nodes that grow on the groin. The nodes that grow on the neck and the armpits seem to be in cooperation in the attack as the poet states that they are “like a synergy”. The poet describes the difficulties in breathing the victim
faces as a result of respiratory infections. The airstream is blocked “like bungs”. The victim struggles to breath because of the foreign bodies along the air tract. The “acid rain” corrodes the thinking abilities. This simile captures the rapid deterioration of the facility to form sound thoughts as a result of stress and depression.
The “barbed wire” metaphor in the first stanza of section two creates a tactile image associated with pain. The spikes on the barbed wire are dangerous as they can prickle the skin causing injury. The poet suggests that the victim goes through acute pain in the respiratory system. The metaphor of “cutting corners” of “the race-course” refers to the lack of the ability to control bowel movement as the victim’s body organs fail to fulfil their primary functions. “Cutting corners”
connotes the idea of trying to reach the winning point sooner than expected in an unscrupulous way. The poet thus gives the impression that the sufferer is failing to control the process of ejecting faecal matter. Kaposi’s sarcoma is a type of skin cancer that usually affects people with HIV. It causes spots on the skin which the poet says they “tattoo” the body. This metaphor creates a visual image of a skin that is blotted with spots.
The poet expatiates on the extended metaphor of the “warrior”. The metaphor portrays the victim as a fighter, albeit a frail one. The “warrior” is overwhelmed by the size of the “battalion of attacks”. This “battalion” refers to the numerous opportunistic infections that devastate the victim. The attempts of the body system to ward off the ailments is an exercise in futility due to the rapid degeneration of the body’s defence system, the immune system.
The use of rhetorical questions brings out an interrogative tone. The persona questions the audacity of infections such as cancer, diarrhoea, dementia and herpes. These diseases are personified as they are ascribed human properties such as cowardice and the ability to agree. The poet personifies these conditions in order to portray them as human beings with predetermined ambitions
to wreak havoc on the AIDS sufferer. They are presented as having “secret ambitions” to “out-kill”. In this section, the victim acknowledges the imminence of death and argues that there is no need for all these infections to attack at the same time because death is now inevitable.
When the body has been battered so much that the immune system is completely ruined, the victim becomes fully aware of the impending demise. At this stage, all the strength has ebbed away from the body and the victim is no longer able to provide 'nourishment' for the pests hence they now “all consider death to be a pest". Death is a pest because it has ‘drained’ all the blood from the victim,
the blood which is food for the “pests”. The metaphor of the “tree” that “groans and cracks” designates the final stages of the disease just before death. Any attempts to serve the life of the victim are a waste of time. The poet compares it to the fish that try to “fight the rising net”. It is the same notion advanced through the metaphor of the “headless chicken sprinting away from death” when it is already dead. This metaphor creates an irony that mocks the useless efforts to preserve life which is already lost.
The rhyming couplets that dominate the first section create musical effects. The rhythm created by the rhyme pattern is repetitive. This alludes to the idea of numerous growths and conditions that constantly afflict the victim. The anaphora produced by the repetition of the word “horns” at the beginning of successive lines underscores the multiplicity of the signs and the symptoms of AIDS on the victim. The poet
explores the stanzas in a meaningful way. The poem has bulky stanzas in the third and fourth sections while in section one and four, the number of lines per stanza ranges between two and three. The few lines in the opening stanzas indicate the first stage of the diseases while the numerous lines in section three and four point to the increase in number and complexity of the opportunistic diseases. The life that is slowly fading away is illustrated by the fewer lines in the final stanzas of the poem.
The poem ends on a despairing tone. It labels God as a cruel person who “created us” so that he can “sentence us to die”. The poet interrogates the purpose of life through invoking God. It seems to the
poet that there is no hope for those affected by the disease. The poet employs an accepting tone as he registers his depressing realisation that once one is infected with AIDS, there is no escape from the inevitable eventuality; death.
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