Today's artist, Xu Beihong, China, (1895-1953), was known for his ink paintings of horses and birds, but was also seen as one of the first to create oil paintings with epic Chinese themes. For some reason, horses have often visited my dreams, and Xu's paintings particularly remind me of the horses I've met. equine dreams Nothing in the grey-shaded wakefulness of a grown life can ever be quite so alive, spirited, joyous and red, so wantonly and purely not dead, as the sometime welling in a dream of the old, convivial, flying horse: trotting, cantering, galloping, an airborne steed— she grins, winks, then pivots, as if once a shivering primal breed, to rear, abandon herself, to sheer whole-body laughter, uncanny, beastly, strangely human, over absolutely nothing and even less than that.
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Wonderful writing and cryptic. I wonder if this horse with all its might and intelligence reflects a woman in this poem?
Galloping over nothing, and even less than that
Makes me want to get on my stallion and ride like the wind
So evocative and horselike. You’re so good.
Love the art too!