Lost in a remote province of the mind A youth attends to the cheap gramophone Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia, A recording by a mill town orchestra Of no repute. But it is magic still: While washing his face and dressing for work In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat, For ten glorious minutes he is not A function, a shop-soiled proletarian Of no repute. Beyond the landlord’s window, Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street, He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out To blood the caravans for glory and gold. A youth greets the day as he truly is: A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar, Whose uniform is bright with victory.