Ted Hughes wrote "A Memory" about his father-in-law, Jack Orchard, who was a farmer in southwest England. The poem is intended as a kind of diary entry in verse form, a way of recording—memorializing—what it was like to live on a farm with Orchard. Here, the speaker (a stand-in for Hughes) watches Orchard (whom this guide will call the farmer or shearer) as he shears a sheep—that is, cuts off some of the animal's woolen fleece, probably to sell it as material for clothing. The poem captures the beauty and intensity of this traditional labor.
The opening lines describe the shearer's appearance and setting. The speaker stresses the physical nature of his work and the toll it takes on his body. Visual imagery and simile combine in a vivid portrait:
Your bony white bowed back, in a singlet,
Powerful as a horse,
In other words, the farmer wears a kind of vest ("singlet"), and his back is bent and bony, indicating strenuous effort. His sheep don't always want to cooperate with his shearing! The alliteration in "bony white bowed back" imposes itself strongly on the line, much as the shearer imposes his strength on the sheep. Next, the simile in line 2 compares him to a horse: one of the most "Powerful" and majestic animals found on a farm. The comparison is simple yet flattering, and it's firmly grounded in the poem's setting. The speaker clearly admires this farmer; indeed, the poem celebrates him and his work.
In line 3, the speaker repeats the word "Bowed," again stressing the shearer's humble, strenuous effort. Then there's some satisfying alliteration: "sheep / Shearing..." This is almost onomatopoeic, as the /sh/ sounds like clippers working their way through the sheep's fleece.
Lines 4 and 5 focus mainly on scene-setting:
Shearing under the East chill through-door draught
In the cave-dark barn, sweating and freezing—
This "barn" is cold and drafty (or "draughty" to the Brits); the poem is set in the north of Dartmoor, Devon, an often chilly area. "The East" refers metonymically to the wind (which blows in from the east, off the Atlantic Ocean). The stressed monosyllables of "East chill through-door draught" sound powerful and insistent, mimicking the wind's stubborn attempts to enter the barn.
The barn is also "cave-dark" (it's probably very early in the morning, when farmers traditionally start working). This metaphor hints that there's something ancient and primeval about the shearer, as though his work places him in a millennia-long tradition. The work is so difficult that he's both hot and cold at the same time: "sweating" from strenuous labor, yet "freezing" in the chilly climate.