WITH THE EYES OF THE SUN
For Erika Ricci and Anna Lisa Rosetti
i
”I am not dumb now,” was Helen Keller’s proud,
challenging statement of fact. Those who can
see, she said, should be “knights of the blind”.
ii
From the horsemen of the Apocalypse
to the breaking, millennia ago,
of wild horses on the western steppes
beyond Volga-Matushka – Mother Volga –
these beasts are both utility and symbol.
In the Aber Valley, where the Afon Goch –
the Red River – falls precipitously
and the princes of Gwynedd rode and hunted,
there have been feral ponies for centuries,
grazing by the river, under the alders,
unmolested. Last year’s snows culled many.
In Ireland, where the horse was revered in myth,
the companion of kings and goddesses,
there are thousands abandoned. In Dublin,
on a cut-off estate – workless, drug-peddled –
a man ran over a horse with a quad bike
repeatedly, and others beat it with planks.
iii
We visited the Palazzo dei Duchi –
near to the site of the town’s small ghetto –
by the Catania Gate, Taormina,
Sicily, once a medieval palace built by
Spanish nobles, knights of the inquisition,
now the municipal art gallery.
And, by chance, we encountered a tale
of beasts made beautiful, the lost found.
Twenty nine paintings hung in the gallery:
an exhibition – that toured Milan,
Rimini, Terra del Sole and Forli –
to celebrate human diversity
and the curative power of horses.
It was inspired by a horse called King,
an Arabian gelding blinded
by corrosive chemicals –
il cavallo daglie occhi di sole,
the horse with the eyes of the sun.
His affliction, his strength, his compliance
rescued a young woman, an addict,
from her darkened, silenced wilderness.
Note: The Horse With The Eyes Of The Sun http://www.kingilcavallodagliocchidisole.it/king.html
John Huddart
September 29, 2017A fine theme to choose, for the September collection, and sweeping wide across Europe to illustrate the mythic power of our old companion. As ever, you educate from the saddle of your own travels, and joy of learning.
David Selzer
September 29, 2017‘…you educate from the saddle of your own travels…’ Good stuff!
Alan Horne
September 29, 2017I am very much enjoying your series of poems related to horses this month. As regards this one, it reminds me of a friend who worked as a housing support officer on the council estates in Stockport. One of the items on her regular checklist was “unauthorised horses.” People would buy horses from the gypsies who graze them on the fields in the Mersey valley close to Stockport centre, and pasture them on the open grassy areas on the estates. Problems might then arise if they couldn’t manage them and left them to roam. It’s easy to see the difficulties, and the humour of it. But I couldn’t help feeling sympathy for someone who might see that the daughters of wealthy people a few miles away in Cheshire could have horses, and wonder: why shouldn’t my daughter have one too?
David Selzer
September 29, 2017I think you’re right, Alan. And I think many people, certainly a generation ago, on council estates were much closer to a rural past than their surroundings might suggest. Many of the pupils at Stanney Comprehensive in Ellesmere Port, where I taught in the ’80s, were children of people resettled from the Liverpool slums. Some, however, had Wirral roots. I remember particularly one boy, apparently thoroughly urbanised – truancy, glue sniffing, police cautions – and who lived in one of the most deprived wards in the country, telling me almost wistfully, during an options interview when we were discussing what sort of job he would like to do, that his granddad had been a thatcher. PS My spell checker queried ‘thatcher’ with a lower case ‘t’. Appropriately ironic given the times!
John Huddart
September 29, 2017Alan needs to write this as a poem, before someone else nicks the material!