This, yes this, is the animal who never was.
No one ever saw one, but they loved it all the same.
- Its gait, the way it carried itself, its little throat,
The radiance of its quiet gaze, - all were loved.

Truly, it never existed. But yet because they loved it,
A very creature came to be. They always kept a space for it.
And in that space, left clear and free, it readily
Raised its head and thus scarcely required actually

To exist. They nourished it, not with feed,
But merely with the conception that it might come to be.
And they bestowed such intensity upon the beast

That it impelled a horn to grow forth from its brow.
A single horn. It approached an unsullied maiden, all white.
And it is in her silver mirror; it is in her.