Cup Day

What else could you post on Melbourne Cup Day but Peter Porter's poem about Phar Lap? Especially now we know that So You Think will not be joining Phar Lap on his pedestal just yet.

"Phar Lap in the Melbourne Museum

A masterpiece of the taxidermist's art,
Australia's top patrician stares
Gravely ahead at crowded emptiness.
As if alive, the lustre of dead hairs,
Lozenged liquid eyes, black nostrils
Gently flared, otter-satin coat declares
That death cannot visit in this thin perfection.

The democratic hero full of guile,
Noble, handsome, gentle Houyhnhnm
(In both Paddock and St Leger difference is
Lost in the welter of money) - to see him win
Men sold farms, rode miles in floods,
Stole money, locked up wives, shomehow got in:
First away, he led the field and easily won.

It was his simple excellence to be best,
Tough men owned him, their minds beset
By stakes, bookies' doubles, crooked jocks.
He soon becaome a byword, public asset,
A horse with a nation's soul upon his back -
Australia's Ark of the Covenant, set
Before the people, perfect, loved like God.

And like God to be betrayed by friends.
Sent to America, he died of poisoned food.
In Australia children cried to hear the news
(This Prince of Orange knew no bad or good).
It was, as people knew, a plot of life:
To live in strength, to excel and die too soon,
So they drained his body and they stuffed his skin.

Twenty years later on Sunday afternoons
You still can't see him for the rubbing crowds.
He shares with Bradman and Ned Kelly some
Of the dirty jokes you still can't say out loud.
It is Australian innocence to love
The naturally excessive and be proud
Of a thoroughbred bay gelding who ran fast."