It was the dawning of Fifteen Hundred
and all my village was at the fair -
I’d bought me a spindle an’ bread an’ spice
and peddled my garlands for ladies’ hair.
I’d rounded the stage of a troupe of players,
drawn by the shape of a stranger thing:
from ground to torso a mighty stallion,
waist to head t’was a man!
“Hush now, tell not a soul!
Things of my kind are fading…”
He told that there was no stronger army
than the sweep of a changing thought.
He lowered his eyes and he smote the turf
and waved a forehoof across the air -
as if to say we had done him wrong,
or was it a warning of things to come?
“Lines are already drawn,
this world will be sundered in two
And from now on you will only meet me
champing the path of your dreams.”
T’was then that I saw he had cast no shadow
and not a soul seemed to notice him -
I thought I caught sight of a tear escaping
as he had turned and his form had dimmed:
“Go!” cried he, “Go like the wind,
five hundred years are grumbling…”
and like the sound of iron on stone,
his plunging hooves were gone.
