BEAUTY SHOW: CLIFDEN, CO. GALWAY They've come to town from each dot on the compass, they're Wild as tinkers and groomed to an eyelash, And light of foot as a champion featherweight Prance on the top of the morning. They walk the ring, so glossy and delicate Each you'd think was a porcelain masterpiece Come to life at the touch of a raindrop, Tossing its mane and its halter. The shy, the bold, the demure and the whinnier, Grey, black, piebald, roans, palominos Parade their charms for the tweedy, the quite un- Susceptible hearts of the judges. Now and again at the flick of an instinct, As if they'd take off like a fieldful of rooks, they will Fidget and fret for the pasture they know, and The devil take all this competing. The light is going, the porter is flowing, The field a ruin of paper and straw. Step neatly home now, unprized or rosetted, You proud Connemara ponies. -- C. Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate, England (Anglo-Irish origins)