Equus
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:36:02
cautious jaunts in hired cars,
suitcase crammed with Kaopectate.

:36:07
What a fantastic surrender to the primitive.
:36:11
The ''primitive.'' l use that word endlessly.
:36:13
''The primitive world,'' l say,
''what instinctual truths were lost with it.''

:36:18
While l sit baiting that poor,
unimaginative woman with the word...

:36:23
that freaky boy
is trying to conjure the reality.

:36:26
l look at pages of centaurs
trampling the soil of Argos.

:36:29
Outside my window, that boy is trying
to become one in a Hampshire field.

:36:33
Every night l watch that woman knitting,
a woman l haven't kissed in six years.

:36:38
And he stands for an hour in the dark,
sucking the sweat off his god's hairy cheek.

:36:46
ln the morning,
l put away my books on the cultural shelf...

:36:49
close up my Kodachrome snaps
of Mount Olympus...

:36:53
touch my reproduction statue
of Dionysus for luck...

:36:58
and go off to the hospital
to treat him for insanity.

:37:06
Now do you see?
:37:21
The boy's in pain, Martin.
:37:25
That's all l see.
:37:38
l understand, you know.
:37:41
l'm not just being Mrs. MacBrisk.
:37:45
You haven't made that kind of pain.
:37:48
So few of us have.
:37:51
But you've still made other things.
:37:53
Your own thoughts. Your own skill.
:37:56
Skill absolutely unique to you.
l've watched you do it, year after year...


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