Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 COMMENDED 4: After Zhao Mengfu’s Bathing Horses by Tarn MacArthur
Now the warring is over
the ritual begins, and those
men we’ve come to know
in blood and barbarism
return again to the heart’s
work of tending to its love,
while set outside this frame
of mind the machinations
and skullduggery of empire
and dynasty go galloping
forever on. But for today
such ablutions are enough:
pouring water on a flank
or brushing down a fetlock,
the whole lakefront imbued
with red dun and chestnut,
skewbald and cremello,
those fashions of the day
stripped off along the shore.
See how every cleansing
touch is a gift gifted back
in fellowship and husbandry
rekindling a peacetime
faith all thought was lost?
Until we have to believe
that this tenderness exists
beyond acts of symbiosis,
that if the horses scatter
the men turn to each other,
bare chested and wading
through an eden they never
thought to enter, reaching
with their opened palms
as blackbirds script the air,
to be held but never tamed,
feel pain but never broken.
