REQUIEM FOR A PONY                                                           i.m. Antarctic ponies                                              1907– 1913

Ice melts
Pony faces
Requiem sound

                        +

Stable song                
(pony choir)

Are we up
Are we down
Do we stand
On the ground?
Do we run
Do we walk
What to do
With all this talk?

                        +

Reading

When the sky bent
Over the ponies
And gave them
A deep blue kiss
They were already cold

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Psalm: for Captain Lawrence Oates
(pony voices)

You led us through ice pastures
Over frozen waters
You stayed when the cruellest 
Blizzards left us belly-deep
In snow
At times we hardly moved
Such terrible tiredness
Only you knew we had become
Ghosts
Like a Sanctuary Lamp
You comfort us still

                        +

Homily 

In the blizzard 
At Camp 15
Ponies wore vestments
Of ice
Kept the faith
Remember them
In the driven snow
Of altar cloths
In the click of sledgeometers
In the cry of the wind
The skull of a skua
When sun slips
Through leadlight windows
It leaves patterns
Think microscopic slides
Of pony hair
Flutters of fringe fibre
Their own DNA

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 Raise your voices

For ponies that swayed
On boats for seven weeks
And could never sit down
For those that broke legs
For those terrified
By killer whales
Yet jumped on command
For those that fell
Into crevasses
For those that heard
The gun
For those who saw it

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Supper
(pony voices)

At the foot of the Glacier
We died on the altar of ice 
For you
Snow buried our blood
Remember those of us you froze
Those of us you ate

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Benediction

Farewell our blessed ponies
Now the sledges
Are loaded with your
Courage your perseverance
Your Spirit and faithfulness
May you dwell forever
In the House of Ice

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Sestina for Pony Choir

Ice 
Pony
Sky
Falling
Song
Remembers

Remembers
Ice
Song
Pony
Falling
Sky

Sky 
Remembers
Falling
Ice
Pony
Song

Song
Sky
Pony
Remembers
Ice
Falling

Falling
Song 
Ice                                                                                                                               
Sky
Remembers
Pony

Pony
Falling
Remembers
Song
Sky
Ice

Pony song
Falling sky
Remembers ice

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Post Requiem Photo Tribute
(pony voices)

An open mouth                                   of moving photos
We walk towards                                 or away from
Solid and persuasive                          as a mass choir
Ice maps the glow                               of snow melts darkness
With a smooth tongue                         nestles like eggs
In the petrie dishes                             of floating bays
Wakes our stables                              with the loneliness
Stares at us                                         stares at us
Till we’re not sure                                not sure
                                    What to do

Kerrin P Sharpe

Kerrin P Sharpe has published five collections of poetry (with Te Herenga Waka University Press, Wellington). She has also had poems published in a wide range of journals including Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet Press), Blackbox Manifold, Poetry (USA), berlin lit (Germany), PN Review and Stand (UK). She has also appeared in Best New Zealand Poems and in 2021 and 2025 received Michael King Writers’ residencies.

Kerrin:  “I wrote this poem on my Michael King residency in November 2025. To get inside the minds of the ponies I read all I could about them. One source that was inspiring was the book The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott by David M Wilson.”