Classic Poem

Bearing the long lance, their banners before them
Frayed to the painted pole, the reins slung
Loose at the neck, knees guiding at withers,
The Men, the Cloth-Clad Race, the People of Horses,
Move out of the East with the turning of seasons.
Westward they move with the sun. Their smoke hangs
Under the unknown skies at evening. The stars
Go down before them into the new lands.
Behind them the dust falls, the streams flow clear again,
Vultures rise from the stripped bones in the sand.
Slowly they move. The moons change. The sun changes.
The mares foal at their times. Girls are delivered
Screaming at dark in the skin tents. The harvests
Of dry seed fall in the grass by the horse way.
Westward they move. They come at last to the passes
Down to the hot lands. One after one they
Go by the stones: the scared horses, the women
Wearing the hammered stuff at their brown throats,
The babes slung at the left breast, the little ones
Riding the stumbling rumps, beating the flies off.
They march on the bare stones. They come to the rivers.
Before them cities stand in the cool of the date palms.
The walls go down. There is smoke. They wait for the summer
Watching the streams fail. They cross by the sand bar.
Their horses drown in the slime. The bodies of children
Float in the slow suck of the ooze. They go on.
They follow the desert quail, they perish for water.
Years pass. They come to the mountains. Beyond are
Rich plains, the grasses blowing in sunlight.
They march through green. They go on, thousands and thousands,
Taking the lands, killing the male, consuming
The fat earth. They live in the land. They are lords there.
They know the sun on their heads, the salt taste
Of the rain drip on their faces. They know the smell
Of their own flesh. They know with their heels what the earth is.
They know how the earth was made and who has the law of it.
They remember many things among them in common.
They please each other with words: they touch with their fingers.
They have their homes in the earth. They have named the mountains.
They kiss their hands to the sun and the moon. They know,
When the leaves fall, the coming again of the summer.
Nevertheless they cannot be still. They go onward.
They come to the land's end. The sea is before them.
They watch the sun go down in the infinite waters.
Still they go on. They push to the surf fall. They build of
Trees ships. They sail to the scattering islands.
They dwell at the last shores. Years pass. They vanish.
They disappear from the light leaving behind them
Names in the earth, names of trees and of boulders,
Words for the planting of corn, leaving their tombs to
Fall in the thickets of alders, leaving their fear
Of the howling of dogs and the new moon at the shoulder,
Leaving the shape of the bird god who delivered
Men from the ancient ill, and under the loam their
Bronze blades, the broken shafts of their javelins.
They vanish. They disappear from the earth.
And the sea falls.
Loud on the empty beaches
and above …
The King rises … Lights, lights, lights!

Lights! Lights! The same stars! The same moon
Still over the earth!

I say there were millions
Died like that and the usual constellations.