MEETING THE SAME HORSE

When I first met the white horse
He had Napoleon on his back;
They were crossing the Alps.
This was in a magazine ad -
For Courvoisier, I think -- the Emperor
Flourished his sword and pretended
He was off to conquer Italy;
You could tell he felt embarassed
To be shilling for a liquor company.
I haven't seen the ad in years
But yesterday I saw the horse
In a Rubens painting. Napoleon
Does not appear there. Perhaps
He told his agent "If Rubens calls
Tell him I'm not born yet."
Instead, the rider is an Arab hunter
Who's being bitten by a tiger. The tiger
Looks angry; the hunter looks surprised.
The horse looks as he always does
Rearing, tossing his handsome head,
His eyes large and intelligent,
Pretending to be barely under control
But inwardly poised, waiting
For the painter to put away his paints
His tiger, his hunter, his emperor,
And pull out a nice apple.

WITH GIBBON

His small fat body laid away
Alongside Sheffields sleeping,
Or so they mostly hoped,
In their family graveyard in Sussex,
The ghost of Edward Gibbon
Having hurried back across the Channel
And then through Europe.
Wandered around Lausanne and then
Haunted Susanne Curchod's daughter
For three and a half weeks.
Processing across the Alps,
He saw Walpole's dog's ghost
Who had joined the pack of wolves
Which had eaten it. (He thought it smiled
To see him but knew he lacked the art
To easily interpret canine thoughts.)
He came to rest among the ruins
Of the Capitol. There, he watched trees
Pushing through the stones
And composed seven hundred footnotes
To add to The Decline and Fall
Should he find himself once more alive.

Some of the friars who lived and prayed
Where Jupiter had been worshipped
Noticed the small ghost, always outside
Even in the chill November rains.
He replied courteously when spoken to
In fluent Latin, with an English accent
And was not dispelled by signs or water
The custos regiminis, a scholar of sorts,
Declared it was an offense against learning
To leave so distinguished a ghost
Outside in the harsh Roman weather.
Calling him "brother ghost," the abbot
Insisted that Gibbon come indoors.
When French troops turned the friars out
In 1797, Gibbon was still among them.