Hart, Kevin: Flemington Racecourse

The racehorses assemble at the starting barrier

in all the finery of a medieval pageant, the jockeys

in silks like figures from a tarot pack, the bookies

in lether and tweeds standing beside their boards

each confident that the future has been controlled;

and everyone, except the dissembling birds, is still

concentrating on a frisky tail, a flashing red light.

They go, against the clock, leaving the shouting crowd

in noiseless elegance, the jockeys with heads bent

and bottoms raised like cyclists in the Tour de France.

The electronic timer divides time into its hairs

as the horses break ground, continually printing

the earth with emblems of good fortune, all leaning

towards the fence, bunched up and fighting, until

two suddendly break free from the pack and only the timer

is beating them, each number something impulsive

and longed-for, like life continuing after death.

Thousands have come to watch, forgetting cars, yet

at the turn nothing can be seen, there is only

the sound of a storm approaching, streamlining

on the straight into the particulars of faces

straining to be the first to get the future over with.

Only the timer is heartless now, and the manic voice

of the commentator, like a loud typewriter, crams

each new second with more words than ever before.

Our eyes will tell us so much more, how one horse

now leaves the others easily, like a fresh runner

just handed a baton, how it pushes through the air

as though the final run were straight downhill.

The future as fooled the past, and joined its ranks –

it’s autumn with paper leaves, and even the brilliant,

evil mind of the timer stops as the horses slow down,

their ordeal over now, and all time before them.