Tuesday Poem: The Old Horse

The Old Horse

Unfortunately this old horse doesn't know when it's beaten.

Taking to the arena like an old man
with a broken adamantine sword
and the truth of
a misspent
youth

Fortunately this horse keeps running all the way to the knackers

It's easier this way, saves the trouble of rounding up
all Medusa's zealously ignorant friends
their smiles long since
turned to
stone 

Unfortunately this old horse stumbles, broken winded, an object of ridicule


There is a truth like a rock in its shoe
the final gun a pebble
lost in many
layers of
stone
 

A.J.



Another cheery poem. But never mind, some really exciting news next week - at least for me, so until then, have a great week and why not check out all the other fab poems up on the Tuesday Blog



P.S. To find out more about this poem check out DYADIC DISEQUILIBRIUM AND THE ALTERNATION OF DEBT: EPISTLES 1.1 or maybe suggest to me some other, better posts about Horace, or at least the work attributed to him, if you know one...in the meantime, this cobbled together extract isn't quite the same as flogging a dead horse...but it is written in a dead language ;)


Prima dicte mihi, summa dicende Camena,
spectatum satis et donatum iam rude quaeris,
Maecenas, iterum antique me includere ludo...


...‘solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne

peccet ad extremum ridendus et ilia ducat.’...

Ozymandius by Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.  Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away"

I just love this poem, and the vastness of it, the overwhelming image of the great and mighty thrown into dust.  I only hope Helen can forgive me because she posted it up not so long ago.

Interestingly enough this poem was written in 1817 in a friendly competition with fellow poet, Horace Smith.  (Isn't Wiki useful?  - although poem shape was endlessly more interesting from a writing point of view with an analysis of each poem (even if the conclusions were a little pedantic). And although I agree Shelley's Ozymandius is far and away the better poem, I rather like Horace Smith's last few lines -

The last lines of Horace Smith's
Ozymandius

Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He (the hunter) meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

I think it works better at a remove from Ozymandius the statue - not only because Smith's vision compares poorly to Shelley's - but because the two images in Smith's poem are clashing.  The green image of London turned to forest sits badly against desolation and desert, so that instead of enhancing the feeling of waste, the reference diminishes it - and yet I still find the possibilities of a wild London rather inspiring and I wonder that Smith didn't forget the whole desert motif and truly move onto the wild green pastures that he hints at :)

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this foray into the past  
A.J. Ponder

A.J. Ponder's work is available through Rona Gallery, Amazon, and good Wellington bookstores