April is Poetry Month (April 23, 2016)

I live and work in the Old Dominion – Virginia, not far from the nation’s capital, but just far enough. One of our distinguished poets, is Henry Taylor who won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1986 for his book The Flying Change which includes the poem, The Horseshow at Midnight. If you are acquainted with the equestrian sport of dressage, it will mean more, but even if you are not – it is a fine sample by one of Virginia’s poet laureates.

THE HORSE SHOW AT MIDNIGHT

by Henry Taylor

I           The Rider

Now, the showground is quiet,

The spectators all have departed.

Along the walls of the arena

The jumps are lying, collapsed

The moon shines down on the grandstand

As I walk out across the ring

Alone, watching for what may not be here.

I take my place as a judge

In the center of the ring, waiting.

Asleep in their stables, the horses

Awaken to my thought-out call

And rise from the straw and walk

To the ring, silently and formally.

One after another they march

Around the ring, proudly, like men.

I stand on my toes and speak softly –

They all start to gallop at once

Noiselessly, weightlessly,

Their hoofs beating only within me.

Around the ring, faster and faster,

Their manes like flame in the moonlight,

They gallop in single file,

Halt as I think the command,

Then walk out of the ring

Into darkness, proudly and softly.

One horse only stays with me

Straining to hear a command

That I am unable to utter.

On a sign from someone unseen

The jumps rise up into place

By themselves, hugely and suddenly

The horse kneels down on the grass

And rises up with a rider

As I watch from my place as a judge

My heart and my bones leave my body

And are heart and bones of this rider.

As the horse flies over the fences

The horseman whose heart is the judge's

Makes no movement or sound,

But the horse knows what he must do

And he takes the fences one by one

Not touching the poles or the ground.

At the end of the course he halts

And the fences retreat to the ringside,

Then my horse and his rider are gone.

Alone in the grandstand's shadow

I call to him time after time

But only my bones fill my body.

The rider and horse do not answer.

I walk across to the gate

Looking back once more at the ring

Watching for sound or a movement

Left behind by one horse that I love.

The empty ring does not echo

And the horse has left no hoofprints.

In the moonlight, alone, I sink down

Kneeling in nothing but bones

And I call to my horse once again

But the ring and the grandstand are quiet.

II          The Horse

In the darkened stable I move in my sleep

And my hoof stirs the straw and wakes me.

I rise, breathing softly, inhaling

The moonlight outside like perfume,

Straining to hear the command

That moved my hoof in the straw

In my huge, shining shape I stand

Listening, and I hear the calling again

Through the locked door of my stall,

Obeying, I march to the show ring

Beside horses I cannot see, but feel

As their hoofs shake the air around me

I march to the sound of a heart

That beats somewhere just ahead of me.

In the ring I lead a parade

In a circle, galloping and galloping,

And I wait for a change in the heartbeat.

I halt, and the others march out,

And I sink to my knees on the grass

As a body gets up on my back

And the man in the ring disappears.

I rise to my feet once again

And look around me at fences

Which have spring like trees from the ground.

My shape fills the air as I fly

Over boards, stone walls, and poles,

And the bones on my back do not move.

Still I move to the beat of a heart

That brought me out of the stable.

I stop when I clear the last fence,

And the bones dismount, and I march

From the ring to the sound of the heart.

Back in my stable I lie down

Wide-eyed, breathless and shining,

Still hearing within me the call

That brought me over the jumps.

This time I cannot obey:

The man is only partly a rider

And the rider in him is within me.

Helpless, grief-stricken, and alone,

He kneels out there in the moonlight

With only his bones for a body,

His heart singing deeply within

A shape that moves with new life.

I believe in the singing and sleep.