How old the dark has become,
standing silent in these fields while
horses weave through each other’s shadows.
They have come like warm rain
and run over the hills in the moonlight
and stood so long alone no one
impatient would ever notice them there.

When the wind and the winter return
the horses will still be here,
their silhouettes outlined in the pale moonlight,
standing still and silent on these hills
or stamping, splattering snow in small spills,
the whole scene turning slowly into landscape
like our own earliest memories.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 5 Number 7, on page 37
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