After reading the Chekhov story
The horse is breathing on his hands.
The night sky fills his mouth.
It takes many words to say that his son is dead
and many nights to finish,
but the animal is patient. Even the limp flakes
blowing between their heads are a listener,
and riders with troubles of their own,
drunk and in pain and feverish,
are dreaming about a boy they have never met.
Some watch helplessly while he calls and drowns.
Some put a knife into a stranger’s neck.
Some twist like keys in a lock on the wrong door.
Some have all the time in the world and a wall of snow.
Some still concentrate on hooves kindling the black street.
Well, the tears of an old man are not important,
especially tonight. Sleep is the one we love.
But a grief in rags leans up to a thick dirty ear
and speaks, and his breath melts a hole in the air
and the years break like infinite mornings on the faces,
white, imperceptibly shrinking, of men asleep
that would not listen.
The rows of stark yellow teeth grinding a slow liquid, the
rasp of a man’s throat explaining without words,
the jangle of passengers’ coins in a pocket,
something like answers in the jolts of a huge head—
all this continues. Drifts climb under the lamps.
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