Vincent O'Sullivan

A friend my own age says “God”
as a kind of code for whatever resists
the shambles we stand to our hocks in,
our last ditch human sleighting
to emboss love a little across the blades

we shuffle, the performance we
seem stuck with, the big canopy’s
bannering “Absurd” above us, the tent
rocked in high wind as when “Wirth
Bros, Circus,” used to trumpet in.

And a routine, an image,
for which I make no claim bigger
than what’s on cue for the moment,
a white horse that I wait for
stepping from under the frosted canvas

after the last blare, the cages
repacked, the clowns’ colours wiped,
the horse saddled with final pallor
in a dawn too slight for shadow,
its fetlocks hooked as to music

and the empty tiers – eternity, is that
the routine? The earth tamped beneath
it, this horse I have never seen, I
persist in regarding. Its hooves of coal
wet, excellent, exact.