A loose translation, not yet quite a gallop, more than a walk: to be
literal is to be a little jerky, rider and horse not unified into that
smooth flight of sweet aching below the saddle, all feet off the
ground at once. Well, another hour goes by. You'll need it. But it
gives you the idea—lap slapping against leather or, bareback, the
soft hair below the mane, yet it's not a place you can stay for long,
breath beginning to move in response to the horse's footsteps—
even more involuntary, a quick exhalation, a little feat of being
thrown; appetite, the beginning of wind, a canter, a leaning down
toward the horse's neck until the motion overtakes us, the scenery
unimportant—yet even this is nothing, as the pale summer light
retreats: nothing but another loose translation.
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Sarah Maclay's first book, Whore, won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. She is also the author of three limited edition chapbooks—Shadow of Light, Ice from the Belly, and Weeding the Duchess. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, FIELD, Ploughshares, The Writers' Chronicle, Ninth Letter, ZYZZYVA, and many other publications, including Poetry International, for which she serves as book review editor. She lives in Los Angeles, California. "Trot" was published in her second collection, The White Bride. Her third collection is titled, Music for the Black Room.