Black Mane

Do you hear him, how he’s asking?

Say something to him.

Let him feel your presence.

When he paws the ground, lies down, and rolls luxuriously,

when he stands up, shakes the dust off, and snorts vigorously,

do not stand in his shadow.

Go to him. Grasp his mane,

like the handle of a coffin, and climb on.

Don’t worry, he will be patient with you.

He sees you laid bare riding him,

following his head like a lovesick pupil.

He knows you will not raise your crop to him.

He feels your flesh twitching against his.

At last you have what you longed for,

as if man on a horse constituted a single creature,

like a man on a high rock

at the edge of a field.

But now the creature leaps about the field,

the self is not a lonely figure in the sun.

The days when you lay his reins in a loop on his withers

and stand beside him, groping his neck,

if he lays back his ears and bares his teeth,

do not feel unworthy.

Body & soul cannot always

be alive together.

                                Walk, trot, stop, turn—these are only words

and yet he obeys them, obedient and calm.

His surrender is not a servile thing.

His power is born not of muscle and blood,

but of a self, like a monument

excavated in the sun.

Feel how your soul burns hard

and is changed by him?

See how he fears and respects you

without fact or reason?

See him looking straight ahead

as if it were Hadrian on his back?

Rub molasses on his bit

and he’ll fling his heels in a capriole.

When your body sorrows into his,

it is as if a bolt were pushed into place,

metal hitting metal, like wisdom.

And his body, bridled and saddled, conveying yours,

brings nothing like grace or redemption,

those taming biblical things,

but like a wave, like a loud chord, like a masterpiece

of oiled canvas, it brings a pulsing, an incessant ravening,

like a robin pouncing at a worm, that nurses

the individuated being, like a tight bud,

into something unsparing while blooming,

and electric, like a paddock fence,

making all that is contained within it

aware of all that is not,

as ash in an urn

must remember the flesh it once was.