For dverse.
Horse dogs
I don’t know horses, except as what they should be,
wild, running, blue as grass and sky, free
of saddle and bit, the shackles of servitude.
I know only the lonely, herdless animals,
tails swishing flies in a bare field,
destined for butchery when the child grows bored,
the adolescent finds other distractions.
I don’t know the nobility of the arched neck,
the herd grouping around the foals,
the wolf on the hill.
But I know the sighthound, gazehound, windhund,
the tall long-nosed dogs, lean as Cassius,
passionate as Antony with the abandon of Cleopatra.
I know their long-legged elegance,
the sudden twitch of the haunches,
the leap into the race, the race, the race,
blind and deaf to the call of this world,
the long-toed feet that grip and fly
with the wings of the otherworld,
fly over grass, blue and green,
of a place only they can see,
a race that ends only in exhaustion.
I know the way they gaze into the distance,
blue and green, of a place I cannot see,
listening to the wind, sniffing the scents
of bird, hare, deer, pulsing blood,
and tasting the wild on their tongues.
The Four Swans 