Beyond the River

A large space of scattered people
And no important polities,
Administered by bureaucrats
Exiled there from the Capital,

Civilized but irrelevant
Space for large, domestic creatures,
Small wild ones like foxes and hares,
And the feral. You be careful.

Satrapies like that have been known
To spawn militant religions,
To play powers against each other,
To invent their own holy texts.

Not a lot of renaissances,
It’s true. But that country beyond
Is excellent for the strange-eyed
Poets who think they know something,

Have seen something everyone’s missed.
They haven’t, but everyone has
Missed something and feels it. Only
The feral can half get it back.