/lit/ - Literature

In four days riding
he crossed the pecos at
Iraan texas and rode up
Out of the river breaks
Where the pumpjacks
In the yates field ranged
Against the skyline rose
And dipped
Like mechanical birds.
Like large primitive birds
Welded up out of iron
By hearsay,
In a land perhaps where
Such birds once had been.

The desert he rode
was red and red
The dust he raised,
The small dust that
powdered the legs
Of the horse he rode,
The horse he led.

In the evening a wind came up
And reddened all the sky before him.
There were few cattle in that country
Because it was barren country indeed,
Yet he came at evening upon
A solitary bull rolling in the dust
Against the bloodred sunset
Like an animal in sacrificial torment.

The bloodred dust blew down
Out of the sun.
He touched the horse with his heels
And rode on.
He rode with the sun coppering his face
And the red wind blowing out of the west
Across the evening land
And the small desert birds flew chittering
Among the dry bracken
And horse and rider and horse
Passed on and their long shadows passed
In tandem like the shadow of a single being. Passed and paled into the darkening land,
The world to come.

>>22157746
Goodnight and Goodbye, Pale Rider