With each blow the nail is driven deeper
into the hoof and the blacksmith corrects
the angle with sideways blows of the hammer.
With each blow the man makes against the hoof
the horse shudders.
Only habit makes it keep still.
It is habit. Its blood holds no memory
of having been a foal among mongol yurts;
of having flanked the phalanxes of Alexander;
the loads under which it bit and kicked.
Its hide does not remember the mud of the Nile
or the sands of Arabia,
it cannot remember the carts and caravans,
nor the vision of a herd of mares beside a lake.
It knows nothing of the sound of tramping
soldiers behind it. Under its hooves
it has not known the granite rock
of a Triumphal Arch and has not been scorched
by the hot marble of Hagia Sofia in flames.
The blacksmith’s rhythmic hammer-blows
in no way help it to remember
the way the saddlebag of the pony-express
would bang against its flank, its mouth does not recall
the sores the bit made, the spurs in its flanks;
nor its sweat rewarded by victory
or the whippings that are the offspring of races lost.
Every horseshoe is a semicircular contract
that we renew regularly and which says:
with blows we love you, we always have need of you,
behave well; perhaps you will be granted the mercy
of a bullet and maybe, when you are old,
you will even become meat.