The Other World

They found the skeleton of a man
under the grass at Crooked Lake.
His people left him in his grave
a chariot with spoked wheels
and heads of horses in full tack,
with severed leg bones posed to strut
at the instruction of the dead.
 
From a burial site of the Eastern Han
comes a galloping horse in bronze,
lips and nostrils flared, right
hind hoof set on the sturdy back
of a swallow who turns her head
as if surprised to carry him in flight.