History: the Horse, by C. K. Stead

Recall those wartime


draught horses pulling

carts around our suburb -



milk, bread, firewood – like

the record of something

irretrievably



lost, the way for example the

beast would stand, one

rear leg resting



poised on a hoof-point

like a ballerina -


or, square-foot, head-down,



nose in a chaff-bag,

or in the roadside trough

blowing through nostrils



before drinking, as