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5 May 2023

Jane
Zwart

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Full Moon

Broken Centaur

After Robert Muybridge

and an unknown Greek

(c.530 BC)

                    Legs beneath barrel, the bloodstock floats

                    in some frames, not one hoof to earth:

                    I think often of Muybridge’s pictures.


                    Not one hoof to earth.

                                                             But a broken centaur,

                    no GIF, no gallop, less than a hand high, six legs

                    short a horse and rider, is really a bronze


                    lolly on a steel swizzle stick, less Pegasus

                    than peg-leg. Did I think he floated?

                    Back limbs snapped at the gaskins, front


                    at the chestnut, he rides a pole; he clears

                    this shelf like cobs clear carousels’ turntable

                    floors. No object card says who broke


                    this chiron. But next to his legs, metal

                    in a soapdish: cast of runt pencil, cast of bent

                    straw, cast of Luckies smoked to the quick.

Behind the poem...

The subject of the poem is a photo of a small bronze statuette – a centaur, none of its legs intact – tweeted by an account I follow on Twitter. Struck by the workaround (a single peg-leg), I was a little haunted, too, by how this sculpture floats, heavily; almost like the stop-motion photographs Robert Muybridge took of a horse galloping: proof that all of the creature’s hooves leave the ground when it runs.

After... (Logo)_GREY.png

© 2025 Original Authors

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