Winter is coming … The mornings have been thick with frost, the car takes a while to warm up, fields are covered in hoar frost and my woolly scarf is unravelled from the drawer of winter things. It’s getting colder as the inevitability that winter is coming becomes a reality. As a lover of horses, poetry and crisp, winter days, I wanted to share this lovely poem, set in Berlin, by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

‘Horses’ by Pablo Neruda

From the window I saw the horses.

I was in Berlin, in winter. The light
had no light, the sky had no heaven.

The air was white like wet bread.

And from my window a vacant arena,
bitten by the teeth of winter.

Suddenly driven out by a man,
ten horses surged through the mist.

Like waves of fire, they flared forward
and to my eyes filled the whole world,
empty till then. Perfect, ablaze,
they were like ten gods with pure white hoofs,
with manes like a dream of salt.

Their rumps were worlds and oranges.

Their color was honey, amber, fire.

Their necks were towers
cut from the stone of pride,
and behind their transparent eyes
energy raged, like a prisoner.

I looked. I looked and was reborn:
for there, unknowing, was the fountain,
the dance of gold, heaven
and the fire that lives in beauty.

I have forgotten that dark Berlin winter.

I will not forget the light of the horses.

‘Horses’ by Pablo Neruda