“That man put on a new woollen coat and went away like a thought”

That man put on a new woollen coat and went away like a thought.

In rubber flip-flops I struggled behind.

The time was six in the morning, the time of hand-me-downs, and it was freezing cold.

Six in the morning was like six in the morning.

There was a man standing under a tree.

In the mist it looked like he was standing inside his own blurred shape.

The blurred tree looked exactly like a tree.

To its right was a blurred horse of inferior stock,

Looking like a horse of inferior stock.

The horse was hungry, the mist like a grassy field to him.

There were other houses, trees, roads, but no other horse.

There was only one horse. I wasn’t that horse,

But my breath when I panted was indistinguishable from the mist.

If the man standing at that one spot under the tree was the master,

Then to him I was a horse at a gallop, horseshoes nailed to my boot soles.

1964