Good Byes
[Following from Hurricane finding his new family of circus 'horse whisperers' and being given the new name 'Han']
There was one more chance to see Han again at the farm.
I woke before dawn to hear the sound of hooves – many hooves - in the field. Not quite conscious I wondered if it was fierce rain beating down on the roof, then thought it might be escaped sheep or horses from the stables down the road, before nodding off again.
On waking and looking outside there was Han and his new tribe!
But Han did not venture close. He lifted his head from the grazing but no more. I felt bereft. He was not the leader of the herd. They moved as a group and he knew his place.
And yet, as I looked at the rippling flanks – toned and gleaming – and him feeding among the herd he was now part of, I was also glad.
Our time with horses is nearly over although we are going to be part of a production of Black Beauty where the stars are real horses (and a cow, sheep and hens). It will involve flying to France on the wings of a wild goose. But Octava wants to have the last whinny.
In 2021 I came across a poem by Philip Larkin entitled ‘At Grass’ [see endnote]. It took me back to my first chestnut love, Octava. The poem made my nostrils flare, speaking to part of me forever horse.
Han, too, I heard a few years later, was put out to grass on a mountainside with other friends, somewhere in Kazakhstan.
UNSADDLED BY PHILIP
Aries arrives with Spring but Venus too
the sky is skeined with wool, pays homage to the ram and ewe
a pair of jackdaws gloom onto the feeder
reminds the day of dark and fertile night
I turn to my book of runes (Ted Andrews’ Animal Speak)
but echoes of the poem for today –
‘At Grass’ by Philip Larkin – make light of metaphor, wreak
silent havoc with the symbols, free me from the noose of language
and ‘though I hear words tumble out –
I’m unhinged from myth
unsaddled from meaning, senses let loose
to canter free across a field of memories
to a beloved retired racehorse.
[End note:‘Almanacked, their names live, they have slipped their names, and stand at ease, Or gallop for what must be joy, And not a fieldglass sees them home, Or curious stop-watch prophesies: Only the groom and the groom’s boy, with bridles in the evening come…’
From Philip Larkin’s, ‘At Grass’ - The Oxford Book of English Verse p. 770]
#Larkin #Horse #goodbyes