Totalizator

The racing room is printed out

with abstract poems of throroughbred names,

and every day revised editions

construct their metaphors, numbered and priced:

Like a Martian

Force of Nature

La La Land

Our Desert Flower

It's here one thing is never proved

between humans and Pavlov horses--

that most popular is always best.

Barely 10% at race day end,

and paid for here in anyone's language,
but true gambler

tongue, with only money.

Breeding comes to nothing beside the paper

achievement's written on:

a three year old by Yeats (the sire)

couldn't stand out among the others.

Nor the local breds who come from last

then stump and stagger back between the failures.