Staining the horizon, they come,
dancing hunters marked by harsh desert night;
the horsemen come galloping,
defining the deep silence;
with their stammer and canter;
thunder.
Iron hooves caress frozen rocks and sand;
Predatory shadows armored by scale and leather,
they ride upon nimble feet;
a torrent tormenting the silence,
they clatter, shatter, in a tangle of flesh and iron,
chasing the cold wind? across rocks and sand,
the horsemen come, riding down through the centuries.
In a fury of crushing iron
they spread panic into the heart of Europe;
Armed with bow and arrow,
each one sits astride his galloping horse;
they take aim, draw back the bow,
and in a flash transform the day.
Elsewhere a golden eagle soars through the cloud,
the man waits patently astride his horse for the eagle,
to take the prey down,
in its majesty, this female bird of prey can not be cowed
yet the man knows she will return to him,
as a man always returns to a women.
In this rocky desert survival hangs by a thin thread,
two predators have formed a pact,
based on trust
but nothing as emotional or abstract
as love,
just the desire to live, to hunt, to survive.
The reportorial bird has found its prey,
it swoops and the wolf has no where to hide
and is soon held tightly;
the wolf looks into her eyes
and knows death has found him;
the man approaches, the wolf dies quickly.
His eyes search the vast expanse of sky,
a glimpse of shadow on the horizon, the first sign
that this bird of prey returns to him,
after years,
she returns from her mating,
though she must go back to the call, the wilderness, the rocks, the hunt.
Tonight, they both together will dine.
In this vastness of contrasting color,
rock, grassland, merging mountains,
a simmering oasis sparkles with sunlight.
Bordered by the Altai mountains, the grasslands,
the prairies of Mongolia, the Tibetan plateau,
and the north China plains,
this rainbow desert sits at the top of the world.
A dry place of rock and sand,
where the snow leopard hunts,
the golden eagle stretches it wings
to touch the stars,
the Gobi bear lives walks its peaks,
along with the gray wolf,
this place of predator, silence,
rock and sand, its vastness.
This place of eons, and towns
those seeking silk had to pass through;
cold and icy, a place of contrasting color
that changes with the night, in star light,
the silence.
Here man feels his smallness
compared to this sand, the rocks and mountains.
They huddle against the coldness of the night,
this thin skin of animal skin,
of? tent and dreams,
is all that separates them from the freezing stars.
In a circle these round houses sit in this vastness.
In this thin skin
they sing their dreams,
cuddled together against the cold freezing night;
they sing of ? glory, past years.
The days of old.
Genghis Khan;
one man who made the? world shiver,
in bringing many tribes into one.
He made the knees of Europe tremble and knock,
when the many became strong;
the stars were not distant then.
The old men sit and sing
their song in this thin skin
How the Golden eagle returns to? the man.
they sing of life, of death.
In this thin skin the struggle
goes on; children, future hunters,
all sit huddled against the cold.
In this thin skin they sing
their dreams,
cuddled against the cold freezing night,
they sing of ? glory, past years.
The old men sit and sing
their song in this thin skin
Outside
the darkness is broken only by the freezing stars,
the vastness of space.
In this bleak place
full of the trickle of distant suns
struggling against the vast night.
