Chapeau bras*, a three cornered
changeling
you can fold up and keep in your pocket.
Celerity in one dark movement of revolt
denied Centaurs incapable of pockets.
A tirade of four-legged men that
rampaged over mountain meadows,
maidens and nymphs ---growing
brawny and bearded in brisk alpine forests.
No thought about where the next centaur
was coming from, which added gaiety
to the fiestas and the drinking afterwards
when they all but destroyed themselves.
Now studied with hind sight
as hobby horse rituals
used for supplanting kings;
Tocqueville ready to find
evidence of the "ancien regime"
But not Chiron, conspicuous
for coveting human qualities,
his head with learning--
a chapeau bras revolting
against his animal nature.
Setting precedent thereby
complicating the lives
of Dia's moon-graced horses.
He prophesied from entrails
and the gods came to be guided,
fearful as any man
over things to come and when Chiron
was wounded by his student's
accidental arrow
The irony of helping the human race
was reduced to freeing Prometheus,
trading immortality for an end
to the wound he could not cure.
His precocious independence,
his Chapeau bras left to another age:
To Dublin, to Bagdad,
and Pristina.
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*Chapeau bras -
a three cornered hat worn during the American and
French Revolutions. |