by David » June 19th, 2006, 8:57 pm
The Lewis estate will probably want some money for this, but here is a poem he wrote on horses:
On A Picture by Chirico
Two sovereign horses standing on the sand. There are no men,
The men have died, the houses fallen fallen. A thousand year's war
Conclude in grass and graves, and bones and waves on a bare shore
Are rolled in a cold evening when there is rain in the air.
Now they have come to the end of land. They meet for the first time
In early, bitter March the falling arches of the sea, vast
And vacant in the sunlight, where once the ships passed.
They halt, sniffing the salt in the air, and whinny with their lips.
These are not like the horses we have ridden; that old look
of half-indignant melancholy and delicate alarm's gone.
Thus perhaps looked the breeding-pair in Eden when a day shone
First upon tossing manes and glossy flanks at play.
They are called. Change overhangs them. Their neighing is half speech.
Death-sharp across great seas, a seminal breeze from the far side
calls to their new-crowned race to leave the places where Man died--
The offer, is it? the prophecy, of a Houyhnhnm's Land?
He sees horses populating the earth after the human race has destroyed itself through war. Chirico was an Italian painter (taught Salvadore Dali how to paint). I'll post later (got to go now) some of his horse paintings.
The way, the weather, the terrain, the discipline, the leadership. --Sun Tzu