EDWARD HIRSCH, "THE BLUE RIDER"

THE BLUE RIDER

He remembered leaping over the corral

And riding on a blue horse

Through a blue valley flooded

With orange light in early morning.

The sky calm and unbending,

The sun shining with the glassy,

Transcendental clarity

Of high ceilings

In medieval German churches,

The radiance transfixed

Under the arches and glimmering

Through the rose-tinted windows,

But then the sky clouded over

And he woke up to a gangster moon

Pressed against the blurred windows

Of a train carrying soldiers

Over a bridge at nightfall,

The light blistered and bandaged

In smog, the blue horse gone

Into the flaming, war-torn mountains,

The sun crushed like a cinder

Under the metallic boots

Of twilight advancing,

A tunnel opening its black jaws

Over the glistening steel tracks

Stretching into darkness,

The wheels pounding, the iron

Hooves clattering beneath him.

            ~ Edward Hirsch, from Earthly Measures

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Oriana:

I love the imagery (both visual and aural) throughout. I especially admire 

The sky calm and unbending,

The sun shining with the glassy,

Transcendental clarity

Of high ceilings

In medieval German churches,

-- and then the shift from that transcendence to a train carrying soldiers and "a tunnel opening its black jaws." 


Una:

Loved this poem, all the color and then the pllunge into the stark train tracks . I know those glorious German ceilings. Attended a wedding in one church in Linz and remember it as being so cold. It was as if it held onto all the cold of its hundreds of years.

Oriana:

I remember a thick-walled, fortress-like church in the town where I was born. Even on the hottest summer day, it seemed to hold the cold of the centuries. The extremely high ceilings of those churches, aside from creating a sense of transcendence, also mean that the interior remains cool at the floor level.