Merry-No-Round
By Bill Knott
The wooden horses
are tired of their courses
and plead from head to hoof
to be fed to a stove—
In leaping lunging flames
they’d rise again, flared manes
snapping like chains behind them.
The smoke would not blind them
as do these children’s hands:
beyond our cruel commands
the fire will free them then
as once the artisan when
out of the tree they
were nagged to this neigh.
Copyright Credit: Bill Knott, “Merry-No-Round” from Poetry 183 (March 2004): 330, 332. Copyright © 2004 by . Reprinted with the permission of .
Source: Poetry (March 2004)