No one paid much attention
to them at the time:
the members of the dressage class
who asked all the wrong questions,
claimed to be graduates
of the Bucharest Equestrian Academy
and stabbed with stubby fingers
at inscrutable qualifications.

Where in Manville could one buy a scythe?
How much was brimstone by the tonne?
Everything was noted,
added up and multiplied by 3.5
— or so the rumor had it.
Conversation, though, was out:
with sharp, darting looks
they policed their silences.

The day a bitter wind
elbowed its way through the bushes
was the day they disappeared.
The security camera caught them
at 5am outside the stables —
four furtive figures in theatrical rags
fiddling with a lock.
Didn't get the horses after all, it seems.

Alan Ireland
From Unlike Other Boys
http://poetry.2hell.com