Les plus lus ▸
Joseph Campbell
Ciaran, the master of horses and lands,
Once had no more than the horn on his hands.
But Ciaran is rich now, and Ciaran is great,
And rides with the air of a squire of estate.
O Christ! and to see the man up on the back
Of a thoroughbred stallion, a bay or a black!
There's not a horsebreeder from Banna to Laoi
Can handle the snaffle so pretty as he!
And Ciaran, for all, has the wit of a child,
A heart just as soft, and an eye just as mild.
No maker of ballads puts curse at his door:
He handsels the singer, and harbours the poor.
For Ciaran, the master of horses and lands,
Once had no more than the horn on his hands.
His bridle hung around the post.
The sun and the leaves made spots come down;
I looked close at him through the fence;
The post was drab and he was brown.
His nose was long and hard and still,
And on his lip were specks like chalk.
But once he opened up his eyes,
And he began to talk.
He didn't talk out with his mouth;
He didn't talk with words or noise.
The talk was there along his nose;
It seemed and then it was.
He said the day was hot and slow,
And he said he didn't like the flies;
They made him have to shake his skin,
And they got drowned in his eyes.
alone with horses
you see in what fear
people live
mad at the dead
at Monday
even at my drink
a nest of papers
convenient as one’s own pale horse
not yet dead
but open to it
an ink body to carry me
away by night
much company in a little room
an old man sat boasting
how he had been in prison
and there was a field
with four horses
and the light of evening
Easter is for the glorious
children of amours
bastard children that know
the best world going
children grown odd in the fields
watching the horses
noon with a white horse and house of plague
here I am
the more I know the more I notice
till twelve at night
having turned
into myself
if I make filth and love
from that horse the body
I think myself obliged
to think myself happy
and not forget the winds that come
only to entertain us
a choir of voices buried
in one infinite chapel
a window is better than an absence
which disgraces the stone
awake I was angry
to sleep is to give way
observing a horse
how it minds nothing
is naked and content
like a mad god
what will become of people
full of sad stories
everybody sick
and never a physician
which sea would help us fear
what we have done
which curse
might trouble us
so small and thin
our ear bones are
the lash of a hard day
without any mirth
an old quarter horse
comes to a standstill in the road
find me
a place just wide enough for rocks
find me a land of fire
but no flag
a blockhead land
in which a beggar must have
the greatest hands
a world in which money
is counterfeit nonsense
like a king’s wind discernable to the eye
where God will grow
in whatever body
poor lord of silence
but I
overcome with seasickness
shut my eyes to the moon
a chocolate horse
carried all the way home
odd to eat it now