for Pavel, in My Antonia
The Cather classic tells
how the wolves follow the sleigh
carrying bride and groom
into a night of fleshly violence
under a darkened moon.
Strange how that image
of howling blood screams
in my memory above all else—
sod huts, scorching sun,
chilblain-cold, cradles and fiddles,
snakes and sparsely-settled prairies,
youth dreaming of the city—
but now, only clear blue orbs
dotting the fur-fringed dark
by the hundreds, the weight
of bristling heads and muscular bodies
set upon a wedding party and their felled horses,
silencing Russian songs, shouts, heartbeats,
all semblance of civilization
in white silk, black serge, wool blankets, bells.
We are never ready for the moment
when death chases the sled,
never sense the hot breath of the pack,
the crunch of snow and bones,
the lunar red floating behind a cloud of fear,
the hunger of beasts our own hunger,
no more, no less.
