Seán Ó Ríordáin

“Gwawnowwdat,” said Turnbull, “and take a good look at the pain in a horse’s eyes. If you’d a pair of dragging hooves on you, it’s short work they’d make of the smile on your face.” You could see that he understood, and his fellow-feeling for the pain in the horse’s eyes; and that dwelling on it so long he’d finally stolen into the innermost space of   the horse’s pain that I saw, too, trying to plumb the depths of  pain that it felt; until it was Turnbull’s eyes I saw starting out from that suffering horse’s pelt. I looked at Turnbull and saw set under his brow as I looked him up and down twice the two, too-big eyes that were speechless with sorrow: the horse’s eyes. Translated from the Irish