Merry-No-Round

The wooden horses

are tired of their courses

and plead from head to hoof

to be fed to a stove—

In leaping lunging flames

they’d rise again, flared manes

snapping like chains behind them.

The smoke would not blind them

as do these children’s hands:

beyond our cruel commands

the fire will free them then

as once the artisan when

out of the tree they

were nagged to this neigh.