Oedipus points out that nobody would be bold enough to attack the king unless he had the support of Thebes. In other words, he suspects treachery

Laius was on his way to Delphi but was killed before he could get there

Creon is saying that whoever killed Laius must be punished before the gods will let the state thrive again.

The horses are eager to go up to him and his friend, presumably because they haven’t had human interaction in a long time.

In the real-life incident that inspired the poem, the friend was Wright’s fellow poet Robert Bly. Bly comments in a memoir:

One day James and I were driving back to Minneapolis from a visit with Christina and Bill Duffy at their farm in Pine Island, Minnesota. Christina loved horses, had been a rider in Sweden, and continued to keep horses here. So horses were very much on both our minds. Just south of Rochester [Minnesota], James saw two ponies off to the left and said, “Let’s stop.” So we did, and climbed over the fence toward them. We stayed only a few minutes, but they glowed in the dusk, and we could see it. On the way to Minneapolis James wrote in his small spiral notebook the poem he later called “A Blessing.”

The munching of the young tufts is wonderful, and many other images and sentences. In a few passages we feel too much idealization. The two ponies are just ponies, and probably would have bit one of us if we had stayed much longer without giving them sugar. We notice that one of the ponies is declared to be female, even though there was no evidence of that in the dusk.

Most likely in reference to Philip Markoff who was charged with armed robbery and murder on April 14, 2009. Markoff would set up ads on cragislist to lure his victims. Markoff was eventually found dead in his jail cell by self inflicted wounds and suffocation.

Before Oedipus ruled the state the King was Laius. Spoiler Alert: As we will find out later this man ends up being his dad.

He is moved by the gentleness of the wind to touch the horse gently, and when he does he feels a beauty that can only be rivaled by the delicate nature of a beautiful woman.

These horses have obviously been alone for quite some time. It is not quite clear whether they were abandoned or not, but it is evident that they have been without the touch of a human for a while.