Sure. But when you say a talking horse,
you mean a horse that speaks and understands
your language, not a horse who tries—or balks
and chooses not to try—to speak to you
in his. You mean that what you’re keen
to know is what you mostly know
already, not the many things a horse
who spoke as horses really do
and spoke that way to you could teach you.

Robert Bringhurst, “Language Poem”, in Ten Poems with One Title, in The Ridge