I arrived quite promptly at the market square
hoping a buyer of my horse would be there.
I required the pounds for a debt I'd pay
On a drunken wager lost yesterday.

Since I hadn't the coinage to make the debt good,
I had three horses and one of them could.
The oldest was frail and sickly indeed,
and this one I'd barter to cover the deed.

"Damn this mare," I mused to myself,
"I had two others in much greater health."
and this one I marched to the market square,
a crooked old horse, and a broken down mare.

I grinned at the fancy of the next to own her,
Indeed he would curse me, that dejected owner.
But of concern to me was a debt to be paid,
regardless of trade or deceit that I played.

It soon became solid as the day wore on,
I would have no purchaser for which to pawn
this decrepit old mare I began to detest,
and I lowered her price to a second-best.

The market square secured its shops
as dark clouds clustered over naked tree tops,
and the sun sunk low in the village West,
along with the outlay to an any-best.

The beast was not fancied, and this seemed certain.
The village fled home, from the stormy curtain
that swelled to black in the Eastern sky,
and men scurried by as loud as I'd cry.

A gale wind coughed, and I fell, chilled to the bone.
The eve had fallen, and I surrendered home.
The distance was great, so I left the square
with arrears unsettled on a crooked mare .

The air was ice and inkwell black,
I made haste homeward, I headed back
to the simple cottage on the seashore's shelf,
lived in by none but my ripe-aged self.

I charged on thunder while galloping East,
through a wooded trail of many o' beast.
Yet the clouds cracked open and wept their souls,
as I dashed up the way of mud-filled holes.

With reins in hand and hooves at trail,
I galloped away on a mount so frail
that she cracked as a twig and fell to the ground.
I drew my colt and she neighed no sound.

As I scurried on foot through the sleeting air,
I heard the wind whisper a whimper, where?
the pitch of night stood -- front, back and side.
The whimper of mourn when the living has died.

A cold like steel had ripped me apart,
considering the dead I rushed without heart.
I raced the beast at continual strain,
blind to the animal's compiling pain.

My pace had quickened at this culpable thought,
and through the sea of sleet I fought
my way to safety; to my shelter on the shore,
where the unrested being will concern me no more.

But the horror had established its truth at once,
when I heard a neigh from the broken horse
that I erased with my colt -- a shot to the head.
and checked it for life; I'm sure she was dead.

Yet now I gathered the following steps
of the once-dead beast, and then, perhaps
the dragging sound of a twisted hoof
as it scraped the rocks in horrid proof
that the horse's immortal was haunting its master --
the soul that slew her was the whole she was after.

"Away, you pest," I snapped at the wind,
but it squalled all the greater and stinging again,
pulling and tugging at my buttoned coat seam,
whilst infecting my ears with a yowling scream.

For many o' mile I charged through the rain,
to flee this beast of wandering pain.
Its horrible hoof lay scratching the stones,
and flushing a madness through my very bones.

Finally I broke through the fields of my home,
and fixed my sight on its comforting stone.
I broke with a passion whilst gasping for air,
since I knew at the cottage, my saneness was there.

Upon reaching the door, I spun wide around,
to see only sleet and a fallow ground.
I found no hoofed-demon as I imagined last,
I bent over heaving, as convulsions passed.

I studied the earth at a branch I could feel,
lodged in the rear of my split boot heel
that mimicked the sound of a dragging hoof,
my fear was madness as there lay the proof.

I mused at the fancy of my spurious fright,
of fleeing from ghosts in the midst of night.
I unbolted the door and my cheeks flushed red
as there stared the mare, with a gap in her head.