April 2007 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Perspective

By Maxine Kumin

Hear the author read this poem

First learn perspective, Leonardo said,
then draw from nature.

Stubbs’s Whistlejacket answers
on a canvas nine feet tall

commissioned in 1762
by the second Marquess of Rockingham.

This horse looks out at any who look in,
prickeared, exaggerated mane and tail
caught in a half-levade, hocks behind heels.

O horse of my heart, hang on at this still point
as all around us open-air markets explode,

body parts rain down and families
rush to collect them, else no afterlife.

The priest insists that animals are sinless,
have no souls, won’t appear in heaven,

his heaven, not the paradise
of expectant virgins. Where

Whistlejacket went is not revealed,
into the ground, perhaps, in his final pasture,
O horse of my heart, full nine feet tall.

Maxine Kumin's recent books include Jack and Other New Poems (2005) and Mites to Mastodons: A Book of Animal Poems (2006). She lives in New Hampshire.