Classic Poem

Again the time and blood consuming sun crosses its corner
With a web of new born light
And there the last stars literally starve.

Grey among a hundred or so other greys
The dawn horse stirs,

Wakes to the waking manifold of new circumstance
And—totally inhuman and remote
Among deep empty drums of sound unreeling hungrily
As though long drowned or long ago
Among unsteady equinoctial darknesses—
Stands.

On the welcoming west slope of the world's first mountain
Half dark in the tilted dominion of imperial light and common grasses
He is standing up
As dew will stand on the difficult pitched deck of grass
In the looking light,

An ordinary model of simplicity,
Spotted
(As when water spots a smooth leaf
With many magnifying lenses
That evaporate in place
Or else slip in the inflammatory turn and sloping),
Cold,
Solid enough for anybody.

Not one that waits at a fence for forked hay
Or feedbag of fodder hung on a headstall in a stable,
It is only he,
The ghostly dawn horse,

Not maiden white but stone colored,
Not a martingale gnawing nightmare
Or rainbow shouldered unicorn at allegorical attention
Or one of those things with wings

But a shaking shadow
Like the remote beating of the timed beast heart
Begotten and blessed by something blooded and blood loving;

Lowering his head for a moment
He starts to step.

Again the time and blood consuming sun crosses its corner
With a web of new born light
And there the last stars literally starve.

Grey among a hundred or so other greys
The dawn horse stirs,

Wakes to the waking manifold of new circumstance
And—totally inhuman and remote
Among deep empty drums of sound unreeling hungrily
As though long drowned or long ago
Among unsteady equinoctial darknesses—
Stands.

On the welcoming west slope of the world's first mountain
Half dark in the tilted dominion of imperial light and common grasses
He is standing up
As dew will stand on the difficult pitched deck of grass
In the looking light,

An ordinary model of simplicity,
Spotted
(As when water spots a smooth leaf
With many magnifying lenses
That evaporate in place
Or else slip in the inflammatory turn and sloping),
Cold,
Solid enough for anybody.

Not one that waits at a fence for forked hay
Or feedbag of fodder hung on a headstall in a stable,
It is only he,
The ghostly dawn horse,

Not maiden white but stone colored,
Not a martingale gnawing nightmare
Or rainbow shouldered unicorn at allegorical attention
Or one of those things with wings

But a shaking shadow
Like the remote beating of the timed beast heart
Begotten and blessed by something blooded and blood loving;

Lowering his head for a moment
He starts to step.