The Beast Of Burden Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The Beast of Burden

These last words of this collection
Is salutation to mules, donkeys and horses?
They have disappeared from city life, yet without them
No city would have been built
From the landscape to they have gone without a lament
Without them, no field would have been ploughed
We owe them our way of life.
They were sacrificed in our senseless wars.
We remember them not and that sadness me
There is a hole, in landscape a white dot beside an oak
Where the mare of many foals stood
I miss the sturdy beauty of donkeys and mules,
And the aroma of their work is gone, and we are poorer
For the vision, we shall not see again