Earth grows quiet inside the horse’s mouth.
The kid dies in broad daylight
and Clint Eastwood rides away:
the kid’s slumped body, the sun in its soup.

Manhattan is clamorous. The horses are dead.
The cows are dead too. The same bullet
fired into the same body. The same rain
on the same dead earth. The same film

over everything is wretched, the same
book of matches read, the same flame
is watched by the eyes of the same

condemned denizens. The kid in daylight
gets off his horse and goes to work.
He is through with the bunkum of death.