From Zerbst

across the wastes they rode,
Crimea first, then Warsaw. then south, and west again.
the horses hammered the flats, hooves kicking up the frozen dirt.

the empress sat wrapped in furs,
her face set against the wind from Riga –
Sophie of Zerbst once,
a German girl, now all the Russias.

she moved fast.

God speed or no God speed, it didn’t matter much.
The snow was already thinking about falling.
the shiver was already in the bones.
another country taken,
her dominion stretched a little further across the nothing.

the horses kept running.
the cold stayed exactly where it was.

slow famine, disease,
but the land strong and rugged,
people weak, dying.