If you really want to hear the way they cry
try living out in Australia,
where they’re everywhere, calling
back and forth to one another as if
they were the only creatures in the world.
And perhaps at this time of day they are:
long before even the first birds,
you can hear them outside your window
breaking through layers of mud and ice
outside; inside you are dreaming
of the rhythm of their hooves, of things
that had once been unutterable,
long-since forgotten. Now they’re back
clip-clopping into your thoughts again.
Oh, do not ask why they’re here now,
think of all the years they must have lurked
in some field behind your happiness—
you never thought to go out and see them.
Why would you, if you didn’t have to?
But perhaps now it’s worth it to go out there,
rather than spending the entire day in bed.
You might have to wait there on the ice
all alone, in a kind of purgatory,
but if you are patient you will see them
coming up from over the dark hills.
From whatever land or whatever kind of dream
they have come to take you back again;
so close your eyes, you belong to them—
their gallop is the gallop of your heart.
