After Ted Hughes

Out on the moors in the late June light, I stood where the infinite hills halved the sky and saw where you first saw your horses. Were they left over from a fever dream, dropped momentarily from some other planet? But in that instant, they existed: ten of them, megaliths with draped manes and tilted hind hooves; each utterly silent, unmoving in the icy morning air. As you passed by, the big sun erupted, darkness shook open and showed you its fires. But your horses remained: patient and gray, statue-like in the iron light, enduring on the horizon. In the crowded streets of London, amid the sea of admiring faces, the scandals, the accolades, did you ever again find so peaceful a place? Or are you still out there, slipping through hills, hiding in the trees, lying in the heathers, combing the barren moors, still searching?

From The Atlantic via this RSS feed