The School of the Horse

We and you, we can
Do a few things well
And for quite some time.

The task of the great
Horse scraped in the chalk
Has been to keep it,

To scrape and scour it,
To keep the sign’s shape,
Just as it was, white

On the sweep of green,
For life on life, for
Time on time on time,

So long that the bone
And bronze folks who first
Scraped out the great shape

Died out, and their tongue,
And their faith, and then
Those of the next folks,

And those of the next,
While the horse still seemed
To run through the years

On its own. The sign
Has no own. It would
Be gone in one life

Or less, grown all green,
Were it not that folks
Still came and still come

With fresh tools and chalk
To save the old shape,
The sign that can’t mean

What it meant to those
Who made it, who made
The first prayers to it.

What the sign means now
Would be as strange as
What the world is now,

But there it is, white
Chalk like a long thread
From them to you. Us.