Askania Nova

The bison are in heat—
one pisses in another’s mouth
and the other laps it up.
We are so close we see
their matted fur,
their gleaming noses.
Ivan Grigoriyevich yells
through the single lens of a binocular
my beauties, I love you!
to horses the color of roasted wheat.
They see him; they love him;
they run our way. They would eat
anything from his hand.
He recites Marx and Lenin
from memory. The high steppe grass
thrills at his touch.
Men refill an artificial lake,
and one of them
hands Ivan Grigoriyevich
an injured falcon,
wrapped in a t-shirt.