Perspective by Maxine Kumin ..... First learn perspective , Leonardo said, then draw from nature . Stubbs’s Whistlejacket answers on a canvas nine feet tall commissioned in 1762 by the second Marquess of Rockingham. This horse looks out at any who look in, prickeared, exaggerated mane and tail caught in a half-levade, hocks behind heels. O horse of my heart, hang on at this still point as all around us open-air markets explode, body parts rain down and families rush to collect them, else no afterlife. The priest insists that animals are sinless, have no souls, won’t appear in heaven, his heaven, not the paradise of expectant virgins. Where Whistlejacket went is not revealed, into the ground, perhaps, in his final pasture, O horse of my heart, full nine feet tall.