Classic Poem

The gravid mares
graze out their months in gentle stateliness,
freed from all human burdens by their own,
kept close in care, pastured in shady fields
where quiet rivers lap the quieter moss
that lines their banks.


The mares go out at dawn
and again at dusk (avoiding the gadflies' noon);
you see them taking shape in the morning mist

or burnished by the golden light of sunset . . .
Tricks of the light?


But we must believe our eyes
even at miracles. Huge and yet delicate,
they stalk their time, the creatures of a dream
(The gods'? Ours? Their own?).
And wake.
And foal.

The marvel of it fades — all marvels do —
and feeling our way, our confidence again,
we lapse into routines, as the gods do, too,
of the business of life.