J’aimé un cheval – qui était-ce? – Saint-John Perse
The race is run.
The rest of the field is still out there, eating dust.
They’ll be fine, once they get home. A rub down, an apple. Johnny Carson.
Now,
This way,
Beyond the blanket of carnations, your peers await, with bated breath.
Man o’ War’s first, of course, embracing you like an old chum he hasn’t seen since, oh, I don’t know, Scapa Flow?
Citation signs, we’ll talk later, old bean.
Bucephalus, last spotted stuffed and mounted in Les Quatre Cents Coups, has returned to life he’s so excited, a trotting Muybridge figure.
His progeny, The Heavenly Horses of Ferghana, sweating blood, chatter in Yue Chinese…or could it be ancient Greek?
The Rt Hon Incitatus, cloaked in the purple of a Roman Censor, mutters to himself in Latin. He feels ignored.
Ruffian, weeping tears of joy, cannot speak at all.
And propping up the Members Bar, Queneau’s Cheval Troyen, raises and drops a glass, silly duffer.
The surprise party’s his idea.
~
Julian George’s work has appeared in the Naugatuck River Review, Perfect Sound Forever, New World Writing, Slag Glass City, Panoplyzine, Ambit, The London Magazine, The Journal of Music, Film Comment, Cineaste and Art Review. His novel, Bebe (CB Editions), appears this month.