On Pincian Hill

Todd Turner

He has outsoar’d the shadow of our night

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Roman dust is a white powdered fetlock.

Keats feels the horse’s pulse, a heavy, thudding

counterpoint to the thin, internal ticking of his dissolving lungs.

Up, where the Pincio curves its stone shoulder,

he steers into a drift of laurel-shade. The air is a blade,

honed by the coming winter, cutting the very breath

the long sea-voyage had tried to keep afloat.

The Maria Crowther was a wooden cage on a salt-grey swell.

Now, he is a rider. A brother to the wind shaking the ilex trees,

his hand loose on the leather, tasting the last of the world.

He passes the Borghese, the snaffle-bit clicking its iron bead

in a slow, rhythmic trot, fever-flushed against the gravel silence,

on a face gone pale as a river-reed. Severn is a worried figure,

standing in the Italian glare, watching a man try to outride

the shadows at his feet. The horse is all muscle and earth,

a terrifying weight of life. He dismounts—and halts—

where the cobbles hit the light. His hand lingers upon the reins—

Night is the only horse now that knows the way back home.

TODD TURNER is an Australian poet, and goldsmith. His first two collections of poetry are Woodsmoke (Black Pepper Publishing) and Thorn (Puncher & Wattmann). His poems have been widely published. His third collection, Breathwork, is due for publication in August, 2026.