Commemorating Quine

No horse has nor could possess
Wings because the stuffs
Which compose them,
Their matter is too
Heavy and always will sink
Earthwards in spite of such white
Grace, thus perish the thought of a flying
Stallion; rather

It was not their matter but
Its configuration that barred
The addition of these superficies
Since nature never could heed
Vane counsel.

Who then first advised or devised it?
Who conceived it in the flesh
And blood -- from what loins,
Monstrous, did equines
Take wing?

It was the promiscuity
Of words that will not suffer
The world; it was the night of thought’s
Combinations, demesne of rock
And froth, kingdom of golden
Protuberance, so it seems, though its denizens
Readily shapeshift, slip
Into and from the familiar, casting
The shadows of experience
On dreams and hiding
The body in all rarefactions of form.