Janet Sutherland
The Horses of the Kiraidji
"The spot was a favourite halting place, had a fine spring gushing from the rock, ornamented by a fountain, erected by a pious Mussulman with an inscription”
—Edmund Spencer, Travels in European Turkey, in 1850; through Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thrace, Albania, and Epirus; with a visit to Greece and the Ionian Isles, in 1850. (London 1851)
The caravan had halted at an elevated plateau
shaded by the foliage of a giant linden tree,
the way was impassable because of the storm.
Forty to fifty men with the produce of Macedonia,
Thessaly and Albania had camped around fires,
cooked, boiled coffee and smoked. A scooped-out
trunk of a tree made a trough for the horses
with a wooden drinking cup for travellers.
A cloudless sky and bracing wind came later.
Then they all yelped a guttural phrase and each
of the horses, freed in the woods to forage,
ran to his owner who held a little pouch of corn.
One impenetrable cry; but a horse knows well
his master’s voice and grasped by the mane submits
to the labour of the packsaddle, the burden of the road.
Janet Sutherland, The Fortnightly Review, April 9, 2020.