My poem and song "Pale Horse" from 1987 to today

In Winter 1987, "Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton" covered my English-major requirement for pre-eighteenth-century literature. In Book X of Milton's "Paradise Lost", a footnote to "his pale Horse" (590) sent me to Revelation 6:8: "[...] there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death [...]". The image sent me to my band's practice room, and soon I had written "Pale Horse". The poem is in my collection "Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong"; the song is on my band Human Shields's album "Somebody's Hometown" – and tonight at 9:30, The Literati (Frank Wenzel, Axel Rüst, and I) will play it at Nadelberg 6 in Basel as one of our literary songs. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 May 2022)