Close to home, their prints
darken the snow.
Come full moon,
the whole night is anguished –
cattle
stagger in their sheds
knocking the walls,
churning fodder and litter;
wide-eyed in lamplight
they buck and bruise.
Under Stalin
culls worked like clockwork –
wolves skinned from their pelts
were hung out to dry,
as cotton stretched to new horizons,
as Kazakhs ate the dust.
Now fences are mended
bolts shot home
and the shotgun propped
by the bed
is oiled and loaded.
But sleep, sleep is fitful
as the lost packs mass
on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
