War Horse

By | 1 August 2014
After ‘Napoleon Crossing the Alps’ by Jacques-Louis David (1801)





Napoleon was a small man who did big things

many other small men wouldn’t dare to do.

But sitting for portraits made him fidgety


so we don’t see much of him here.

This painting is all horse and Napoleon

a mere emblem of ideal leadership,


when actually, he rode to this battle by mule,

not the fiery steed he requested here,

rearing high on meaty haunches.


One thing’s clear:

if great men die with ceremony,

not so their horses.


Just this bulk smashing into hard earth

and the belly twisting piteously

as the battle continues on.
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Lisa Jacobson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer. Her verse novel, The Sunlit Zone (Five Islands Press), won the 2014 Adelaide Festival John Bray Poetry Award. This book was also shortlisted for four other national awards: the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the Stella Prize, the Wesley Michel Wright Prize and, as a manuscript, for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. An earlier poetry collection, Hair & Skin & Teeth (Five Islands Press), was shortlisted for the National Book Council Awards. In 2011 she won the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize. Her work has been published in Australia, Canada, Indonesia, the U.S. and the U.K. She has studied literature at Melbourne and La Trobe Universities, and remains an Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe. Her new poetry collection, South in the World (UWA Publishing) will be released later this year (2014). She lives in Melbourne with her partner and daughter.

http://www.lisajacobson.org

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