Michael Longley: Sleep and Death

Length / Form 19 lines (18 lines in Greek)

Relationship to Classical text Translation of Iliad 16. 666-83

Comment P. McDonald, ‘Cold Comfort.’ Review of Michael Longley’s Snow Water. The Guardian 22 May 2004 - 'the poem shapes itself entirely around two passages of near-repetition, as Zeus gives detailed instructions … then Apollo performs - to the last detail - the list of specified tasks. The close repetition is there in Homer but in Longley's poem it is all there is, and the effect is one of eerie doubling ... Care takes over where carnage has left off - but twice, and with a ritualistic attention to particulars mirrored in the act of verbal repetition.'