elegy for a horse

I felt like I was reading Dali, as much as one could possibly read a surrealist. I think Levis is a surrealist with words the same way Dali paints his dreams. (For a refresher on who Dali is see here: http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=1364. ) Anyhow, I had to look up Levis as a person in order to have enough of a handle on who he was to unpack his palimpsest of experiences. Turns out, most of the images existed in his lifetime (Obviously he wasn't around during t he Greek myths). He received a Guggenheim and spent two years in Yugoslavia (when it was Yugoslavia that is) and there learned about kulaks and spent time on a farm with horses and was geographically close to Greece and Italy (it's almost directly north even though that seems weird, I know) and it all starts to fit together from there. I was fascinated following the imagery of the horse in particular through his poems. I think the first instance was the poem with Anastasia and Sandman, although arguably we first encounter the horse on the cover. So, horses are beasts of burden (traditionally and he at least follows a lot of the Greek traditions with their particular mythology) and therefore carry a lot of weight. Pun intended. Horses are important to Levis for many reasons. He reportedly grew up on a large farm in California, that employed a lot of migrant workers in the 60s, but also used horses instead of 'modern' farm machinery for a lot of tasks. Levis is familiar with horses in a way that most of us want to be familiar with his poetry. Horses are important to the physicality of elegy in a lot of interesting ways. I looked up elegy and horses but came up with nothing; although, horses are typically in statues paying homage (ahem elegy cough, cough) to famously valiant soldiers. The number of hooves the horse has on the ground, grounded, in the earth, stationary, rooted in the present, depicts the manner in which the soldier on his back died. Levis doesn't address this bizarre fact in his poems, but I think it serves as more background for his inclusion of horses in relation to elegy, or as I take it, depictions of life after life. Sandman, the horse, comes to represent time in a really interesting way throughout the poems, and is with Anastasia (not the Disney Anastasia the real, Russian girl who was supposed to have escaped to somewhere in what is now Poland and northern Czech republic, parts of which are ridiculously close to the Yugoslavia Levis would have spent time in) who famously ran away from the world (I interpret this loosely as I think Levis did) and whose icon or persona became timeless, or maybe she just spent forever with time, i.e. Sandman. Sandman is also reminiscent of the particular form of time associated with sleep. Originally the sandman poured sand into our eyes so we could sleep for eternity. Gee, that sounds a whole lot like death, the state which allows us to indulge in elegy. I think the idea of indulgement was central to Levis, and why he chooses a surrealist journey through images and places and moments so that we can both indulge his sensibilities and indulge in his clearly loving remembrance of particular details of his life, like horses.
The weird contrast comes in the fact that we are indulging in death, in elegy, and in beautiful images dependent on the act of termination. I think this is why we may not be able to completely grasp Levis, and I don't want to completely unpack anything. I want to unpack enough to understand, granted, but understanding completely would mean completely indulging, something which I think Levis wisely keeps from us, so that we are unable to completely indulge in death.