The Horse

"The Horse" (p. 311-312)
by Philip Levine

When I first read through this poem, it seemed as if there was an old horse that wanted compassion from a stableboy, but in its blindness it killed the stableboy without knowing. The ending of the poem, particularly the last stanza, signal that the horse must be used as a metaphor; I had the impression that the horse was a metaphor for a dancing couple who are unsure of their relationship, and only discover each other through dancing. After reading through the poem a second time, I noticed that it was dedicated or sent to Ichiro Kawamoto, "survivor of Hiroshima." In this new context, I perceived all the imagery in the poem, especially that of the first stanza - "without skin, naked, hairless, / without eyes and ears, searching...tattered walls, butting his long / skull to pulp...where iron fences corkscrewed in / the street and bicycles turned / like question marks" - to show the pain and suffering of the Japanese people who experienced the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. The second stanza further mentions a burning river and still rocks, which further show the burning flash of the explosion and the silence of death that occurred after the blast. The third and fourth stanzas explicitly discuss death - the stableboy and some outside spectators all with their mouths open as if they were suffocating continue to show suffering. The fifth stanza talks of new growth coming from the dead, as if a rebirth occurred after many had died. The sixth stanza begins with "There had been no horse," saying it as if the death of the horse was so terrible that it is better to not mention the horse at all. In this respect, it might be a sense of closure to say that it is better to forget the deaths that occurred during the blast, and that the "rage" that could have ensued should dissipate after the rebirth.

This poem first caught my eye with the title - it somewhat reminded me of The Sound of Animals Fighting's full-length album, Lover, the Lord Has Left Us, which mentions horses in a couple of its song titles. In particular, the imagery of a morbidly dead horse with scenes of death made me feel as if I had experienced so much death myself. In addition, stanzas that began with a large indent seemed to say "but wait, there's more," as if the pain and suffering would not end. The last two stanzas, thankfully, seemed to end the death and leave the state of my mind in a somewhat cold, dark, yet accepting mood.