Gift Horse

“I have a small-town mind. Like the Greeks and Trojans.
Shame. Pride. Importance of looking bad or good.”

“I support the War, says the comic, it’s just the Troops
I’m against: can’t stand those Young People.”

Robert Pinsky

Some one has dropped off a wooden horse
in the eastern part of America
and parents are teaching their children

how to ride the beast
around the courthouse, the plaza,
the city park, the new mall.

The children of the town
take turns riding the wooden horse
day and night, week after week,

month after month, year after year
until they grow up into teenagers,
into young adults and become bored,

they rebel, they conspire, and one night
a gang of them burns down the wooden horse.
Embers rise into the night sky,

and in the morning there is only
a pile of ashes where the proud beast stood
in Troy, New York, in Troy, New York.