Hart, Kevin: Flemington Racecourse
Flemington Racecourse (English)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.
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