Mule Song
A. R. Ammons
Silver will lie where she lies sun-out, whatever turning the world does, longeared in her ashen, earless, floating world: indifferent to sores and greengage colic, where oats need not come to, bleached by crystals of her trembling time: beyond all brunt of seasons, blind forever to all blinds, inhabited by brooks still she may wraith over broken fields after winter or roll in the rye-green fields: old mule, no defense but a mules against disease, large-ribbed, flat-toothed, sold to a stranger, shot by a strangers hand, not my hand she nuzzled the seasoning-salt from.
