You were not brave,
dear honey-heart:
in the strange and vast expanses
of that country that I long for,
where narrow-eyed warriors
pound the horizon
with their wild, round-rumped horses,
you were a cowering forager
picking stray clumps of yak wool
from thorn brakes and briars.

Nor were you generous,
my dearest penny-pinching Slav:
while the others were slaughtering their best
and fattest goats,
you were fondling the tired stalks
of last year's purple grain
to make a pale and pasty porridge.

And where were you
when the pulsing goat-throats
were stretched backwards and slit,
releasing black jets
of liveliness for a great
and hearty feast?
You were watching from your wife's
safe compound,
peering from the narrow crack
between your woman's enclosing skins.

I did not mind
that you were not brave,
that you were not generous;
but why, little pygmy,
did you enthrall me so
with that late-winter shadow
that stretched across the windswept plain?
That shadow-liar was oh! so tall!
so virile and erect!
Little did I know it meant nothing-
it was just a lying shadow
made by a winter sun
that was, as we all know,
too short-lived,
and held barely any heat.