Excitedly, the black-faced cranes
Come every spring flapping their wings and,
Blue beards fluttering,
They land at will.
It’s not true what they say, that
These wandering birds have no home.
They travel their destiny,
Returning to their birthplace,
Cranes paired together
Over the spacious steppe,
Exhausted from the long flight
Back to their regular haunt.
And, year after year,
The locals become used to these birds.
Near to a farm,
They lay two spotted eggs.
Who could know that
This untrodden place
Hid eggs –
You’d never think it.
When they came to the gentle steppe,
It was to a place without evil.
When they laid their eggs on the bare gravel,
They gave not a thought to misfortune,
They got dirty, protecting
The unsuckled birds within the eggs.
An inquisitive fellow, they say,
With not a thought,
Trod local wisdom underfoot,
And subversively pocketed the eggs,
Getting home
Without arousing suspicion. 
The two poor cranes
Stepped into pools of rain-water,
Hid their feathers as if they had no wings,
And there spent the summer, without their young.
When the autumn wind ruffled their plumage,
They came near to the farmer who had taken their eggs.
Nobody noticed their grief,
As the horses were trotted out.
Some way away, the farmer’s son, his eyes sparkling -
He had bells on his shoes and a short jacket on -
Ran playfully after the cranes.
The adults weren’t watching him.
The cranes homed in on the happy child,
Running in from behind,
Closer and closer and closer,
Distance out of mind,
And his mother’s breasts ached.
Three times she called her child.
They searched across the wide steppe,
And combed between the blades of grass.
He must have sprouted wings and flown away.
They didn’t find even one of his boots.
As the days are borne forth by the world,
Unravelling us into the kisses of old age,
When will this scrap of a boy be found, he
Who never knew the eggs were stolen?
The cranes’ melancholy song
Is tethered above the ger.
Is it a shadow or a tear?
The milk in the pan has turned.