I watch coolly, made of jade,
horns twisted behind my head.
See-through, I catch the light, see
my descendants millennia ahead
re-routed by railways, pipelines, towns
– their steps lost from Russian steppes,
nostrils no longer filtering dust
on their migratory journey.
In Kazakhstan, herds trapped
by a vast wire fence starve to death.
There is only one of me now.
*The saiga antelope once inhabited a vast area of the Great Steppe from Asia to Eastern Europe but is now critically endangered.
