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From “The Via Dolorosa of Art”
WHITE stallions dashed by. | |
| I could see their teeth gleaming | |
| Through their lips as they sneered | |
| With death-laughter upon them. | |
| Light poured in silver | 5 |
| Off their arched necks. | |
| But there was blood upon their flanks, | |
| Scarlet trickling upon the white sinews. | |
| The stallions were prancing to death, | |
| Trumpeting defiance with their nostrils. | 10 |
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| White Chillingham bulls followed them. | |
| I saw them gore the stallions, | |
| But a wince of pain was across their eyes too. | |
| Sharp horse-hoofs had struck them on the heart. | |
| They fought with missing heart-beats | 15 |
| To plow on, tearing the soil with polished hoofs. | |
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| If they could only reach the forest, | |
| If only to die there! | |
| I could not help them. | |
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| I remembered dreams I had had | 20 |
| In which white mastodons trampled the plains, | |
| Seeking to reach the forest before death. | |
| And white Irish stags, ten men high, | |
| With antlers that were giant trees with white bark, | |
| Had stumbled under the weight of their own bulk. | 25 |
| A wince was across all their eyes— | |
| But a smile, a never-mind tenderness. | |
| Perhaps they were sure of coming into the purity | |
| Because of their whiteness. | |
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| I knew why they were white: | 30 |
| They were my dreams—all frozen, | |
| And all white with the frost upon them, | |
| And white with the frost all through them. | |
| They were frozen thwarted male things | |
| Rushing somewhere— | 35 |
| Seeking, fighting, and killing; | |
| But white—say that of them. | |
| The steam off their quivering flanks, | |
| Sweated and weak with exhaustion, was white. | |
| They would never find mates | 40 |
| Before they died. | |
| There would be no more white males, | |
| None so clear a white as these; | |
| Only some tinged with gray—dusty. | |
| But I could not watch them rush to the forest forever— | 45 |
| Not one did I see arrive there— | |
| A cloud or night or blackness always intervened. | |
| I saw them rush forward and disappear, | |
| And then saw no more of them. | |
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