The White Cat Toqtamish

In 568 AD, a Sogdian

came to Istami’s Western Turkic Khaganate

from Khosrau the First’s Sassanids, to serve as a guide

to a caravan of traders from Khrurasan.

On the tired banks of the Ili River he saw

a white cat crouching in the color of night

like a patch of snow in Talas, surrounded

by clean meadows and friendly darkness.

He saw several worlds on the white cat’s body

calmly swirling. Arrows, bloodshed,

cries from the slaughtered city all disappeared

in its white whirlpool. After a few moments,

he gave up on Manichaeism.

One thousand four hundred thirty-nine years later,

in the middle of the night, my wife and I

also see a white cat,

about three months old, small but dignified as he strolls

by the dried-up pool of the Weixiu Garden,

like the crown prince of the last dynasty, crossing

time and space in the lamp’s shadow, returning to the old garden

to survey his obscure but noble memories.

He doesn’t avoid our touch, but

won’t respond to our babbled cat-speak; separated 

by a leaf, a flower,

the polite night breeze, he concentrates

on taking in the scents of many worlds.

He tries to use his liquid eyes

to tell us something, but in the end

he leaves us like flowing water.

We think he went to the White Horde

of 1382, what we call Toqtamish,

wanting to set out at night

to conquer the Golden Horde and rule over Russia.