Oleksander Dovzhenko, translated from the Ukrainian by Dzvinia Orlowsky and Ali Kinsella

Yes, about the horses…

It seemed to me that horses and cows knew some dark, awful secret they refused to tell. I’ve felt their deep, captive souls and thought them clairvoyant, especially at night, when everything comes to life in a new way. We owned many different horses because Father frequently bought and sold them at the fair. Some horses were mean or bad or possessed unhappy, broken horse souls. Frightened, bewitched, disturbed, they were eternally cursed horse sinners. And they were all distant from us, downtrodden, damned once and for all. This was most apparent after sundown when you gazed into their large, gray horse eyes.