Imagine living outside on the bleak and windswept hill-lands - Fells - of northern England. Such is the hard life of the mighty Fell Ponies. To them, the life of our brumbies in the snowy high-country would be luxury indeed.
Here's a picture of some Fell Ponies, followed by an amazingly atmospheric poem. The imagery (of both) is amazing. It'll take a few readings to get the comparisons between old mechanics and the hard flesh of these old-stock horses, but the effort is well worth it. Again.
Fell Ponies by Simon Armitage
They have got up
out of the dirt, the first
hauling the buried boat or ramshackle cart
of its own self
from a ditch.
Then four more follow,
the props of their legs
fossilised limbs of oak,
because there were forests here once.
Not ponies as we know them
but big-engined,
an early design,
leather straps and hardwood cogs
at work when they move,
boulders for ballast
swinging in rope sacks
strung from a crude frame,
the flesh,
an all-over daub
of soil and mulch that won’t set.
It’s a lean burn all the same –
just enough breath
on the oil
to keep the lamp in flame...
All this gone wild,
Ashington escapees grown moody and mean
on aloneness and sleet.
They trundle forward
into some old war and forget,
or blink awake from a dream
of pack road or pit,
of ploughs or sheds
at their heels,
then lower their heads
to browse on root and weed.
Wherever they halt
is the world’s edge,
or they wait
just an inch from the future’s wall of glass,
seeing nothing,
taking it all in, at any moment
to turn into mist, or re-emerge,
come lumbering
out of the flooded mine,
now cut-outs up on the ridge,
now barring the path to the bridge,
seaweed fringes and axe-head stares,
their hides
knotted rugs of rags
slung over the beam of the spine,
all smoke and steam,
ignited by lightning strike in the first storm,
put out by rain.
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