On the Courthouse Steps

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Sheep grazing on farm of Russell Spears, near Lexington, Kentucky: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

The light in which the sheep are bathed must be that of a twilight before civilization, I had innocently thought.
(In Sumerian, Eme-Sal means language of intelligent woman.)

Seeing the ribs of the horse, speaking to the brother in the street, these are real things, evidently,
so why is it the silence of history seems deafening

Blacksmith shoeing team of farm horses on Saturday, Russellville, Kentucky: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, July 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

to a horse that has no name? Does the type ultimately have to become invisible, before one accepts Oni-giri,
a way of having face that is also a losing face? Or no, can it be the loss was irrevocable -- because the face forgotten and left

behind forever was the one that concealed the mechanism, the mystery
within the history of what was thought and felt by someone you never knew, there, that unremarkable afternoon?

Front of the courthouse, Breathitt, Jackson County, Kentucky: photo by Marion Post Wolcott, September 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)