If you really want to hear the way they cry

try living out in Australia,

where they're everywhere, calling

back and forth to one another as if

they were the only creatures in the world.

And perhaps at this time of day they are:

long before even the first birds,

you can hear them outside your window

breaking through layers of mud and ice

outside; inside you are dreaming

of the rhythm of their hooves, of things

that had once been unutterable,

long-since forgotten. Now they're back

clip-clopping into your thoughts again.

Oh, do not ask why they're here now,

think of all the years they must have lurked

in some field behind your happiness—

you never thought to go out and see them.

Why would you, if you didn't have to?

But perhaps now it's worth it to go out there,

rather than spending the entire day in bed.

You might have to wait there on the ice

all alone, in a kind of purgatory,

but if you are patient you will see them

coming up from over the dark hills.

From whatever land or whatever kind of dream

they have come to take you back again;

so close your eyes, you belong to them—

their gallop is the gallop of your heart.