The Tartar swept across the plain In their furs and silk panties Snub-nosed monkey men with cinders for eyes Attached to their ponies like centaurs Forcing the snowy passes of the Carpathians Streaming from defiles like columns of ants Arraying their host in a vasty wheel White, gray, black and chestnut steeds 10,000 each to a quadrant Turning, turning at the Jenuye's command This terrible pinwheel Gathering speed like a Bulgar dance Faster and faster Until it explodes, columns of horsemen Peeling away in all the four directions Hard across the puszta Dust from their hooves darkening the sky They fall upon village and town Like raptors, like tigers, like wolves on the fold Mauling the sza-szas And leaving them senseless in puddles of goaty drool Smashing balalaikas Ripping the ears off hussars and pissing in the wounds They for whom the back of a horse Is their only country For whom a roof and four walls is like unto a grave And a city, ptuh, a city A pullulating sore that exists to be scourged Stinky dumb nomads with blood still caked On shield and cuirass And the yellow loess from the dunes of the Takla Makan And the Corridor of Kansu Between their toes and caught in their scalps Like storm clouds in the distance Fast approaching With news of the steppes, the lagoons and Bitter Lakes Edicts, torchings, infestation The smoke of chronicles Finding their way by the upper reaches Of the Selinga and the Irtysh To Issyk-Kul, the Aral, and then the Caspian Vanquishing the Bashkirs and Alans By their speed outstripping rumor Tireless mounts, short-legged and strong From whose backs arrows are expertly dispatched As fast as they can be pulled from the quiver Samarkand, Bukhara, Harat, Nishapur More violent in every destruction This race of men which had never before been seen With their roving fierceness Scarcely known to ancient documents From beyond the edge of Scythia From beyond the frozen ocean Pouring out of the Caucasus Surpassing every extreme of ferocity From the Don to the Dniester The Black Sea to the Pripet Marshes Laying waste the Ostrogoth villages Taking with them every last cookie Then dicking the help These wanton boys of nature Who shot forward like a bolt from on high Routing with great slaughter All that they could come to grips with In their wild career Their beautiful shifting formations Thousands advancing at the wave of a scarf Then doubling back or making a turn With their diabolical sallies and feints Remorseless and in poor humor So they arrived at the gates of Christendom From The Strange Hours Travelers Keep, by August Kleinzahler
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