The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea Read Online Free Page A

Her nerves,
the doctor said, were frail.
He was civil, God be praised,
if whisky-scented. But … that man
was so familiar. His name was …
what? Beard, morning suit …
She hesitated. Something stirred
on the horizon, scarlet, blind,
immense. A distant groundswell.
One long blaze of men and women
kissed and rapturous, that roar
of thousands in the heart.
ENVOI
    Almost dark. The last moraine.
Uplands, twilight, prospect.
Lights, cars, baggage.
You have had your dream
and felt the spell of ordinary
things made young again.
You can be mortal now.

Once Upon a Time
    Some want to know what happens
when the bent cop holds a switchblade
to the pimp’s throat. Some want
to see a horse the color of conkers
or hear the boom of fireworks
like carpets being beaten.
Others want to stand, invisible,
beside a bed as two men fuck,
or cheer when the little deaf girl
kicks the fat priest who is every
bully they have ever known.
    But everybody wants to slip
their flesh off like a winter coat
and enter this familiar room
that smells of gas and beeswax,
where sunlight pours from the big window
and the freighters move continually
in the river’s mouth.

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2006
    Copyright © 2005 by Mark Haddon
    All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd, London, in 2005.
    Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
    Earlier versions of some of these poems appeared in
Acumen, Boomerang, Reactions, Stand
magazine, and the
Evening Standard.
“Poets” and “The River-Car” were published in the Arvon International Poetry Competition Anthology 2000.
    The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
    eISBN: 978-0-307-49819-9
    www.vintagebooks.com
    v3.0