The horse with birds on its mane, doubt on its tail…
doubt about the flies being whisked north or south…
crawled out of the relieved horizon, in
a burst of dung part-coloured with kente.
And the angle at which the horse bisected the hills,
made it easy for the old man with the square body
to jump up its decorated left flank, leaving
half his age behind as his bones came down like a pounder.
Galloping was a definition of time, more
for the man, less for the horse
whose high brown snorting would be framed
if only there were strong hands,
if only the ancestors would jump the centuries.
Now a woman raised her right breast on the right flank
of this horse of wonder, this horse
with a mane maimed by the limiting beauty of birds.
Mansa’s whole body shook – O god of soft thunder! –
as the old man stretched his lust across horse flesh,
trying to speed through the geography of tails, but
suddenly meeting ghana
half-way up the horse instead; suddenly
seeing bishops and fetish priests
so that his reverence gently covered his lust, true
the religious men wanted to bless the impudent hooves, but
the horse threw off angels with a burst of shank, with
the old man kneeling on the saddle and begging Mansa for love,
as her breasts shook in incense.
Since the sun and moon were
in a simultaneous sky,
Mansa watched half a country hang on half a horse,
watched the old man’s smiles and rejected
each
one,
throwing the most outrageous one under the hardest hoof.
Pound your laughter, pound your world!
Rejection was no different, even when mixed with speed,
old man’s nails were digging into horse country,
old man’s knees were shaking the shanks
of a suddenly stationary stallion:
The horse with birds on its mane, doubt on its tail…
doubt about the flies being whisked north or south…
crawled out of the relieved horizon, in
a burst of dung part-coloured with kente.
And the angle at which the horse bisected the hills,
made it easy for the old man with the square body
to jump up its decorated left flank, leaving
half his age behind as his bones came down like a pounder.
Galloping was a definition of time, more
for the man, less for the horse
whose high brown snorting would be framed
if only there were strong hands,
if only the ancestors would jump the centuries.
Now a woman raised her right breast on the right flank
of this horse of wonder, this horse
with a mane maimed by the limiting beauty of birds.
Mansa’s whole body shook – O god of soft thunder! –
as the old man stretched his lust across horse flesh,
trying to speed through the geography of tails, but
suddenly meeting ghana
half-way up the horse instead; suddenly
seeing bishops and fetish priests
so that his reverence gently covered his lust, true
the religious men wanted to bless the impudent hooves, but
the horse threw off angels with a burst of shank, with
the old man kneeling on the saddle and begging Mansa for love,
as her breasts shook in incense.
Since the sun and moon were
in a simultaneous sky,
Mansa watched half a country hang on half a horse,
watched the old man’s smiles and rejected each
one,
throwing the most outrageous one under the hardest hoof.
Pound your laughter, pound your world!
Rejection was no different, even when mixed with speed,
old man’s nails were digging into horse country,
old man’s knees were shaking the shanks
of a suddenly stationary stallion:
horse hair was full of brown regret,
was full of the morality of not galloping
when the country was sagging with the speed of time.
But let horse dung salute accra!
Let the blue moon burst over a clear gallop!
Let them rise against the unwanted pity of horse ethics!
We want the african touch, neighed the horse, for
it desperately loved Mansa’s thighs pressing against it. But
old man shouted the horse on. Onnnn!
For the half of ghana that was missing
was merely the gaps in his old teeth,
was merely the spatial side of galloping.
On! Human flesh orbits horse flesh!
Old man falls from flank to flank,
bouncing across a withering country, shivering
under the weight of horse decrees
that Mansa carried on behalf of the authorities.
On! with the most moral horse in the world, for its
thighs did not return the pressure of Mansa’s thighs, for
after all the universe was a stilled gallop,
was an old man crawling away from a cantering,
crazy life,
was a contradictory shank shaking.
As Mansa fell off at last by the tune of a distant highlife,
the horse snorted for other women, the
horse… its morality lost in its speed at last…
threw off the old man.
Man, poor, old: he died with a smile before he hit the ground:
and under him were the crushed birds
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