Shangtu

From The Journals of Marco Polo, I. 61

At Shangtu he keeps a stud :
ten thousand mares and geldings, all white as snow.

These mares are seeded by the wind
lifting their tails in autumn, growing slow

and round, turning inward with the season
till one day they are gone.
Now winter comes:

cattle thin, the lines of their ribs exposed;
horns crack, frost rots off their tongues

their mouths a lamp-black hole of teeth and ice.
Now daylight recedes, red with cold

rivers are welded to the ground;
the earth turns to the moon;

twin worlds of dry white air
and bare, dismantled bones.

Days are nameless; each a hung silence.
Then one day, late in April

the wind leaves muddy footprints on the path;
the sun burns a hole in the sky

and there are the horses, browsing the ridges
like clouds broken on the grass

creatures from a strange, older country,
rough hair growing down their flanks

the light slipping off them.