On Holding a Horse’s Head at Five A.M. Early June 2024

As the sun rises over the

green hill and every uneven oak

is carved by light into a great

perfection, a horse whose name is

despair lies in the centre of my kitchen

with its sharp ribs and red eyes and a thousand

wounds that darken the morning sky.

We moved home while they bombed Rafah.

I labelled boxes while tents burned and then

three guys and a van carried our accumulated

debris of love, practicality and life’s sheer overwhelm

as the next instalment of the Gaza blood-price

was exacted.

I look out towards Woodencliff and Waterleat

holding a handful of words against the light.

Look: our ruin of a garden, thick with bindweed;

the moor beyond: Nut Crackers, Hollow Tor

and Seven Lords’ Lands. Somewhere out there,

Logan Stones and Bonehill, all the moor

beyond that. Barely a portion of the land; a

pocketful of granite and green.

I can’t see or hold it all and a grey

slab of cloud is moving east in

the morning.

How do I marry this bounty with

the burning country and the slake

of horror in Israel’s bloodlust throat?

The dissonance of such

desecration and the exultant blackbird

on the rooftop; the way the busy

sparrow returns to its nest in the laurel

and the swallows soar into the

roof-corner while the beast

feeds on corpses every day.

I drink my coffee and the horse

struggles to breathe and I want to

turn away, not hear its rough cry

or put my slippered foot in the

pool of dark blood beneath our

old table. Last night’s takeaway;

an unfinished bottle of Prosecco to

celebrate the new home. First drops

onto the land, of course, as we’ve got

manners. Meanwhile, the horseblood

soaks into the floorboards. Meanwhile,

the slaughtering goes on. Meanwhile, the

fat sparrow waits for its mother.

Meanwhile, the sunlight slants across

the meadow and the spring of the

world coils and uncoils and I live

my ludicrous life and lift the horse’s

head into my arms and press my

face against its fading starbrow

and I renew my vows in the

shadow of its heaving heart.

Gods, show me again how to live

with one foot in paradise and

the other foot in hell.

The rain begins.

I honour the dead,

write for the children

as-yet-unborn and steer

towards the storm.

Tom Hirons is a writer and storyteller based on the edge of Dartmoor, in England. He is the editor and founder of Clarion magazine and 'Feral Angels Press' and co-founder of 'Hedgespoken' travelling storytelling theatre and 'Hedgespoken Press'. His poem-book Sometimes a Wild God is a bit of a sub-cultural classic and his most recent collection is The Queen of Heaven (Feral Angels Press, 2024.) He manages — against the odds — to make his living through writing and teaching poetry. 

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