I. White

The white pony canters onto High Street
With waltzing hoofbeat on the cobblestone ;
Already the children are won over .

Calliope wind pipes in from clover,
Concentric on horse and rider alone,
The mane like a spring that shuns a dry stream .

The chiseled rider sits erect with crown,
Bow of conquest drawn taut by the first seal,
Borderlands besieged by pony and liege .

Feeling safely centered in city breach
The hurricane winds tighten like newsreel,
Headlines turn : “ PHAËTHON CAREENS OUT OF TOWN . ”

Hope evaporates like shimmer from stones ;
Grass dries into skin, the outlook like bones .

II. Red

The armored red pony marches with clang
Across the landscape full of rising smoke
Where justice once ordered nature’s bounty ;

Now blood soaks the soil across the county,
Thundering shoes under a bellicose bloke,
The fife requiems and the base drum bangs .

Civil unrest gallops with sword upturned,
The horse ablaze knows not the innocent,
Only the stirring up of dusty hate

Of kin against kin, cutting lines of fate .
Even sacred architecture is rent
Art and culture lost, history unlearned .

The sword still drips as the warhorse aways ;
The iron bell tolls for funeral days .

III. Black

Refugees of the toppled towers roam,
Scrambling for crumbs in the smoldering crust
Of flattened wheat fields and orchards barren .

The scale-bearer scans crows and carrion,
Three measures salt and a handful of dust,
Cold the exile replacing hearth and home .

The leaden horse fixed chiseled and stoic
Remains unmoved by the starving masses
Shuffling deathlike in search of a morsel .

Just skin draped on frames once fleshed by muscle
Marks the populace across the classes—
No ex machina descent heroic.

Winter hooves cut deep into salt and loam
As the pitch-ponied mount fades into gloam .

IV. Pale

An ashen pony takes shape from the mist
Of winter, then skates the skyline ghostly,
No twinkling wishes in a night possessed .

Hollow for a heart in the pale horse chest,
The ragged rider holds a scythe closely.
Their charge requires only graveyards exist .

Slinging the sickle, deathly chill descends,
Soul from soma sundered o’er the fallen—
The arc of the blade very democratic .

Harvest book entries are mathematic,
Accounting for conquest, war, and famine ;
Restful the last breath as the pale world ends .

The ledger is balanced; the names must stay,
But the harvested crop spirits away .