Elegy for a Borzoi

Hound of Arctic winds unleashed,
your mangled shanks, burst colon healed,
your heart released to soar beyond
the confines of a woman's grief,
a hare of helium, a bird
where packs of clouds rove fields of air,
casting shadows on the open steppelands
where precursors ran,
gliding above forests where the gentry
tracked down wolf and bear,
where has your exiled spirit found its lair?

Only you knew in your bones,
tortured by the surgeon's hands,
that deep nostalgia for snow
which I could barely comprehend,
the tumult of adrenal glands,
the horses, the rank scent of man
relentless in pursuit of prey,
the wolves, those worthy renegades,
outstripped, outnumbered and at bay,
your kinsfolk closing on their quarry,
white drifts dense with black and tan,
feral grey pelts torn and gory,
leaving trails as red as rowan
berries on the churned-up furrows.


Such images coursed
through the hunter's synapses
as you lay dying,
until ice, glistening like Sirius,
encased your eyes.
Heir to a romantic line
of canine aristocracy,
you were their enlightened scion,
gentle as a lamb, and mild.

You were no hunter. To clinicians
you were just another beast,
a number in a lifeless file,
grist for their laboratory.

I remember you with sorrow,
how you bore your suffering
so nobly, that the surgeon's claims
anaesthetised me to your pain.

I wish we could be reunited
one bewitching summer night,
where the polar evenings shimmer
with Aurora's fleeting glamour.