Vox Populi
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Pascale Petit: The Moor Horses
We race from the top of Kilmar Tor
to see them gallop across the plateau, manes flying, tails
streaming behind, as they plunge into the water
and stand there cooling while foals roll on the grass.
And still the horses arrive, as if they’ve descended
from petroglyphs, released from millennia carved on walls,
tracing the water-scent, the ancestral map to this pool
set in the slope like a gem-framed black mirror.
They are frost and flint hooved, the appaloosa stallion
splashed with sparks from bonfires in the great caverns.
His mare erupts from the mud
and glares at us, her eyes dusted with rock sleep.
Hasn’t she just woken from stone dreams? Doesn’t her pearl coat
with its bronze paint tell us she is sacred?
And isn’t your blood free as a feral pony, coursing
through the uplands of your body? Your bones granite,
your marrow clear as the brooks that thread down to the valleys.
The months that we trekked up through the ruins
and you photographed each stonechat and lark,
our picnics under fruiting rowans, then up
to the top of the tor, with its stone formations
like fertility goddesses. And that last hot day when
the horses appeared, and flew beneath Bearah Tor.
Their blessing, when the whole moor raised itself to the sky
like a shield to protect us. That moment when you
held out your hand and touched the stallion – as if you too
were made of porphyry and quartz that had just sprung to life.
Copyright 2024 Pascale Petit. First published in Times Literary Supplement .
Pascale Petit was born in Paris and lives in Cornwall, UK. She is of French, Welsh, and Indian heritage. Her eighth collection of poetry, Tiger Girl (Bloodaxe, 2020), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and for Wales Book of the Year. Her seventh, Mama Amazonica (Bloodaxe, 2017), won the inaugural Laurel Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her debut novel, My Hummingbird Father, is due from Salt in 2024 and her ninth collection, Beast, from Bloodaxe in 2025.
Vox Populi 
Pascale—if my blood wasn’t running as free and far as those horses, it certainly is, does, run with them as I read these words.
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that’s a lovely thing to say, thank you
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Thank you for your very kind comments on my poem, and to Michael for posting it
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What a gorgeous horse poem! And so much more than that–
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Amazing images. They held me in their thrall, and it’s a poem I certainly won’t forget. What all the others said. And these lines (well, all the lines, really):
“Hasn’t she just woken from stone dreams? Doesn’t her pearl coat
with its bronze paint tell us she is sacred?”
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I love the way the horses have emerged from the petroglyphs yet bear traces of the stone, how the appaloosa is “splashed” with sparks, and the bird would have to include a “stonechat.” What a wonderful dream of the wild. Thank you!
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Yes, Pascale’s metaphors and images are so original and striking!
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these line:
“And still the horses arrive, as if they’ve descended
from petroglyphs, released from millennia carved on walls,
tracing the water-scent, the ancestral map to this pool
set in the slope like a gem-framed black mirror.”
Just **perfect**!
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We are there, our senses pulled through her words. Thank you.
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Brilliant Pascale! The petroglyphs-yes!
What a fabulous mind you have—I love everything you do!
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