SEAN LYSAGHT
Hegel's Horses
The road sloped down to meet
an old bridge spanning the Shannon
where men and horses charged.
When the Protestant bells jangled overhead
to say heaven was a smithy,
the single idea was forged,
and peace paused. Into decent quiet,
at firs t faintly, the galloping hooves
battered the road as if it
would
break.
All noise was three or four
great horses and their riders
that left us standing in their wake.
Thus Yeats, on our stabled colt,
Napoleon's cavalry at Jena,
and Tennyson's Arthur riding to his doom,
from something yoked to pride
in a Limerick field one drizzling morning,
and driven hard into the streets' narrow room.
And abandoned. With bleeding flanks,
they were left steaming
at the roadside, dragging their reins,
until a hard-pressed traveller-call him Hegel–
pulled up on a string of curses
to recover his stolen horses, yet again.
